How to write down a brand voice people can actually follow

Voice guidelines fail because they are written as adjectives. Adjectives are not instructions. Nobody has ever looked at "approachable, expert, human" and known whether to write "we'll get back to you" or "we will respond within one business day".

Use pairs, not adjectives

Write your voice as a set of tensions with a side chosen:

• Plain, not casual.
• Specific, not comprehensive.
• Direct, not blunt.
• Confident, not promotional.

Each pair rules something out, which is the only thing a guideline can usefully do.

Show the same sentence three ways

For every rule, write the sentence wrong in both directions and right in the middle. For "plain, not casual":

• Too formal: "Please be advised that our office will be closed for the duration of the holiday period."
• Too casual: "We're off for the hols! 🎉 Back soon!"
• Right: "We are closed from 24 December to 2 January. Anything urgent, email Johannes directly."

Three examples teach more than three pages of theory.

Write the words you do and do not use

A short list, and be strict. Ban "solutions", "seamless", "leverage", "cutting-edge" if you mean it. Decide whether you write "we" or the company name. Decide whether you use contractions. Decide, once, whether it is "email" or "e-mail" — and if you work bilingually, decide the German equivalents too, because a German page written in the tone of an English one reads like a translation.

Handle the awkward moments

Voice is easy on the homepage and hard when something has gone wrong. Write examples for: a price increase, a missed deadline, a refusal, a bug, and a rejection. If the guide only covers marketing copy it will be abandoned the first time someone has to write something difficult.

Keep it to two pages

Pairs, examples, word list, awkward moments. Two pages that someone reads beats twenty that sit in a folder. Put it where the writing happens, not in the brand PDF.