Separate brand voice from tone
Voice is the set of language choices a business wants to make recognisable across its communications. Tone changes with context: a billing notice, a product launch and a support response may need different levels of warmth or detail while still sounding like the same organisation.
Write down the audience and task before choosing adjectives. ‘Confident’ can mean concise and detail-led for one business, but boastful for another. A useful guide explains what a reader should notice in the writing, not only how the team wants the brand to feel.
Choose a small set of observable principles
Pick three or four principles that can be applied during editing. For each, describe the behaviour, the reason it matters and a boundary. For example, ‘specific rather than grand’ could mean naming the service, buyer and scope while avoiding unsupported claims such as ‘the best’ or ‘guaranteed growth’.
Pair each principle with a short before-and-after example written for an actual channel. An instruction such as ‘be human’ is hard to use until the guide shows whether that means contractions, direct address, plain words or a warmer sign-off in a particular context.
- Principle: what the writing should do
- Reason: what it helps the reader understand
- Boundary: what it must avoid
- Example: how an editor can apply it
- Channel: where the rule applies and who approves an exception
Apply a rule to a channel
Hypothetical example: a mobile bicycle-repair service in Leeds chooses the principle ‘specific and calm, not grand’. Its booking page changes ‘We are the best bike repair service and will get every rider back on the road fast’ to ‘Book a mobile puncture repair in Leeds. We’ll confirm a visit time before travelling.’
The same principle can shape a booking email: ‘Your puncture-repair visit is booked for [confirmed date and time]. Reply to this email if you need to change it.’ Naming the service and next step is easier to understand than a superlative or an unverified promise. Keep the scenario hypothetical; check every service, location and commitment before adapting sample copy for a business.
Build a language system around the offer
Record the confirmed names for services, products, roles and processes. Explain acronyms on first use where the audience may not know them. Note words that create an unintended promise or make a useful distinction disappear, such as calling every project ‘bespoke’ when the work follows a working rule package.
Include claim checks alongside vocabulary. Writers should know which results are supported, which require review and which cannot be stated. A voice guide is not permission to make a claim more persuasive than the detail allows.
Adapt the voice without losing recognition
Set a few context rules for the situations the business actually handles: sales pages, proposals, product messages, support, social posts and operational notices. The same core principles can lead to different sentence lengths and levels of detail. A service page may explain scope; an error message should identify the issue and the next useful action.
If more than one audience uses the site, document which terms need explanation for each. Avoid creating separate voices for every channel unless the organisation can maintain them. A shared system is easier to review and less likely to fragment as new contributors join.
Test the guidance with a short editing task
Give two contributors the same short draft and ask them to edit it using the guide. Compare where their choices differ. If the guidance does not help them resolve a repeated question, add a rule or example rather than another list of personality words.
Name an owner, a review route and a version date. Revisit the document when the offer, audience or risk profile changes. Business.gov.uk also recommends including tone of voice and a content-creation approach in brand guidelines; the useful level of detail depends on who writes for the business and where that writing appears.