Tone of voice

Most tone guidelines fail

They describe adjectives rather than decisions. Friendly, professional and approachable are true of nearly every business and give a writer nothing to act on when choosing between two sentences.

They are also written once and never consulted. A document that has to be read before writing a page is a document that will not be read before writing a page.

The version that works is a short list of concrete choices: words we use, words we never use, and how we handle the two or three situations that come up repeatedly.

They also arrive too late. A tone document written after forty pages exist is a document describing an inconsistency rather than preventing one, which is the usual order businesses do it in.

Write as you speak, minus the filler

For most small businesses this is the whole answer. The way an owner explains a job on the phone is already clear, already specific and already trusted by customers.

The difference between speech and good writing is mostly removal: the repetitions, the hedges and the run-ups. Keep the vocabulary and the directness; cut the rest.

The practical method is to record yourself explaining something and write from that, which our page on describing your business covers in more detail.

The short version that works

The list below fits on one page and is the only tone document most small businesses need. Everything on it is a decision rather than an adjective.

• Words we use for the things we do
• Words we never use, and why
• Whether we say I or we, and stick to it
• How formal we are with a stranger
• How we say no to a request
• How we explain a price going up
• What we sound like when something went wrong

Consistency matters more than character

A site where every page sounds slightly different reads as several businesses to a person and gives an answer engine no consistent voice to quote, which undermines trust more than any individual page choice would.

That is the practical argument for writing the short list down: it is the thing that keeps a site consistent when three people contribute over two years.

Consistency is also achievable. Distinctive character is harder, riskier and matters less than most branding advice suggests for a service business.

It is also what survives staff changes. A short written list is the only part of a voice that transfers when the person who wrote the original pages is no longer the one updating them.

Where tone should change

An emergency page, an error message and a complaint response should not sound like a services page. Somebody in difficulty needs plainness and speed rather than warmth.

Legal and policy pages are the other end. There the job is precision, and attempting personality makes the page harder to rely on and occasionally harder to enforce.

So the rule is one voice with deliberate exceptions, each written down. Our page on microcopy covers the small text where those exceptions live.

What undermines a voice fastest

Marketing language nobody in the business would say aloud. Leading provider, bespoke solutions and passionate about quality all read as borrowed, because they are.

Inconsistent person is next. A page that opens with we and drifts into the company name in the third paragraph feels subtly wrong even to readers who cannot say why.

And overclaiming. Our page on honest claims covers the substance; the tone cost is that one unsupportable sentence makes the careful ones sound like sales copy too.

Testing it

Read a page aloud and ask whether you would say it to a customer standing in front of you. Anything you would not say is something to rewrite, and this test alone fixes most tone problems.

Then have somebody who knows you read it and ask whether it sounds like you. They will identify the borrowed sentences immediately even though they could not have written the page.

And check a page from two years ago against a page from last week. Drift is gradual and invisible from inside, and comparing the ends of a period is how you see it.