Most brands have a tone of voice somewhere in a document: three adjectives, usually friendly, professional and approachable, and a line about being human. Then five people write the website, the newsletter and the customer replies, and it sounds like five companies. The adjectives were never wrong. They were just not decisions.
What tone of voice is
Tone of voice is the way a brand sounds when it writes: the words it chooses, how long its sentences run, what it says first and what it leaves out. The voice stays the same everywhere; the tone adapts to the moment. A brand can be warm on its homepage and brief in an error message and still be recognisably itself.
Why adjectives are not enough
"Friendly" means something different to every writer. One adds exclamation marks, another adds jokes, a third uses the reader's first name. Without anything more concrete, each writer fills the gap with their own habits. A useful voice guide replaces descriptions with choices a writer can make on their own, without asking anyone.
What a voice guide should contain
- Principles, each written as a choice that rules something out. "We name the outcome, not the tool" can guide a sentence; "we are clear" cannot.
- Vocabulary: the words you use, the words you avoid, and how you write your own product and service names.
- Example lines: the same message written the right way and the wrong way, for the places your team actually writes, such as a product page, a quote or an apology.
- Tone shifts: how the voice changes between selling, explaining and handling a complaint.
Keep it short enough to read in one sitting. A guide nobody opens shapes nothing.
Our own voice, as a worked example
We hold our own writing to one line: stately, never loud. Calm, precise and with rhythm. Three principles carry it:
- Whole sentences. Verbs and rhythm, not lists of loose nouns that read like a spec sheet.
- Praise is for the client. About ourselves we state facts. Adjectives we leave to others.
- Craft over jargon. We name what the work delivers, not the toolbox behind it.
Each one rules something out. "The world's best, award-winning agency" fails the second principle in five words. That is the test of a good principle: a writer can tell, without a debate, whether a sentence passes.
Agree it on one page first
A voice guide written in isolation stays theoretical. We write one real page in the new voice first, preferably one that does a lot of work, and agree it together, line by line. The disagreements on that page give the guide its real content: the word that felt too casual, the claim that felt too big. The remaining pages follow from there.
Reading your own copy back
A few checks that work on any text:
- Read it aloud. A sentence that trips you up will trip the reader too.
- Cover the logo. Would a regular customer still know it is you?
- Look at the first sentence of each section. It should answer something, not warm up.
- Count the adjectives you use about yourself. Replace each with a fact, or remove it.
Where tone of voice belongs
Tone of voice is part of a brand's verbal identity, next to its key messages and its names. We develop it as part of brand identity, and apply it page by page in SEO and copywriting.