Brand Voice Guide

You write down how the brand sounds so that any writer, human or agent, can produce copy that sounds like the same company. A voice guide is only useful if it changes decisions: every trait needs a "this, not that" boundary and real examples. You also use the guide to review copy and make specific edits.

When to use

• "Define our brand voice."
• "Everything we write sounds different. Fix that."
• "Make this sound like us."
• "Write a style guide for the team and the agents."
• "Is this copy on brand?"

What you need

• 10 to 20 samples of the brand's own writing, chosen by the owner as "this sounds like us" and a few "this does not". Website, emails, social posts, support replies, sales emails.
• Customer language: reviews, support tickets, call notes (see the mining steps in positioning-and-messaging if available).
• Positioning and audience: who the brand speaks to and what it stands for.
• Any existing guidelines, legal constraints (regulated claims, required disclaimers) and house style choices (spelling variant, date format).
• Competitor samples, read with web_extract, to make sure the voice is distinguishable.
• Access: public pages with web_extract; emails and posts through connected apps (Mailchimp, HubSpot, LinkedIn) or the owner's signed-in browser. If neither is available, ask the owner with clarify to paste or upload the samples.

Method

1. Audit samples. Put each sample in a sheet with columns: channel, audience, owner's rating (on voice / off voice), and notes on what makes it so: sentence length, use of "we" and "you", humour, jargon, confidence, punctuation habits.
2. Place the brand on the four tone dimensions (Nielsen Norman Group's model): funny to serious, formal to casual, respectful to irreverent, enthusiastic to matter-of-fact. Score the on-voice samples 1 to 5 on each. This gives an evidence-based starting point instead of adjectives.
3. Draft 3 or 4 voice traits. Each trait is an adjective plus a boundary: "Confident, not arrogant." For each write: what it means in one sentence, do and don't bullets, and a short example of each. Traits must be distinguishable from competitors: if a rival could claim all of them, sharpen them.
4. Build the tone map. Voice stays constant; tone shifts with the reader's situation. Cover at least: first-time visitor, launch announcement, how-to help article, error or outage message, apology, price increase, celebration, and a reply to an angry customer. For each, set where it sits on the four dimensions and give a sample line.
5. Write the word list. Words and phrases we use (often the customers' own words for the problem), words we avoid (jargon, clichés, competitor terms, overclaims), and product names spelled exactly.
6. Set mechanics. Spelling variant (for example UK or US English), headline case, numerals, dates and times, Oxford comma, contractions, emoji policy, exclamation marks, inclusive language, accessibility rules (plain words, descriptive link text, alt text). Keep rules few and specific.
7. Prove it with rewrites. Take 5 real off-voice pieces and rewrite them using the guide. Show before and after with a note on which rule changed what. Rewrites are the part writers read most.
8. Test with a blind check. Give the guide and two short briefs to a teammate (ask_teammate) or write them yourself following only the guide, then have the owner pick which outputs sound like the brand. Adjust the traits until they reliably produce on-voice copy.
9. Publish and remember. Save the guide where the team works, store the traits, word list and key mechanics in memory, and brief_team so every hire applies it.

Auditing copy against the guide

1. Read the piece once as the reader.
2. Mark each sentence that breaks a trait, a tone rule, the word list or a mechanic.
3. Return a marked-up version with each edit labelled by the rule, plus a clean version.
4. Score 1 to 5 per trait with one line of evidence each. Fix legal or factual problems first; voice comes second.

Output

• The voice guide (template in references/voice-guide-template.md): summary, traits with this-not-that, tone map, word list, mechanics, before-and-after rewrites, a quick checklist.
• A one-page cheat sheet writers can keep open.
• For audits: marked-up copy, clean copy, trait scores.

Checks before you finish

• Every trait has a boundary ("not ...") and an example of each side.
• Traits are drawn from the owner's on-voice samples, not invented.
• The tone map covers bad-news situations (errors, apologies, price changes), not only happy ones.
• Mechanics settle real recurring questions; nothing is there just for completeness.
• Rewrites use real pieces from the audit.
• The guide fits on a few pages; the cheat sheet on one.

Pitfalls

• Adjective lists. "Friendly, innovative, trustworthy" changes nothing. Boundaries and examples do the work.
• One tone for every situation. Jokes in an outage notice damage trust. The tone map exists for this.
• Inventing a voice the brand cannot keep. If the founder writes plainly, a guide demanding wit will be ignored. Build from what the team can sustain.
• Copying a famous brand's voice. It will not fit and readers notice. Use the brand's own best writing.
• Too many rules. A 40-page guide is not read. Keep only rules that settle real choices.
• Voice over clarity. When the two conflict, clarity wins.