Two people on the same team can write about the same product and produce pages that sound like they came from different companies. One is brisk, one is wordy, one apologises for existing, one shouts. Readers notice the mismatch even when they cannot name it. A brand voice guide is the document that stops the drift.
It is not a manifesto. It is a working reference: a few pages that tell a writer which words are welcome, which are banned, how long sentences usually run, and what to do when a line feels wrong. Here is how to build one that survives contact with a busy team.
Start from samples, not adjectives
Most voice guides fail on the first line, where someone writes friendly, professional, and trustworthy. Those words describe every company on earth and instruct nobody. A writer cannot make a sentence friendly on demand, but they can copy a rhythm they have seen.
Collect ten pieces of writing you are proud of: a support reply that calmed someone down, a product page that sold without pushing, an email that got replies. Print them. Read them side by side with a pen and mark what repeats. Short sentences after long ones. Second person. Few adjectives. Concrete nouns. Numbers where numbers exist.
Then collect five pieces you dislike, usually older pages or copy inherited from an agency. Mark what makes you wince. That contrast is better raw material than any brainstorm about brand personality, because it is evidence rather than opinion.
Name the four dials you actually adjust
Voice is not one setting. It shifts with the moment. Describe the range with a few scales and a sentence on where you normally sit.
- Formal to casual: where do you land, and when do you move?
- Serious to playful: which topics never get jokes?
- Direct to diplomatic: how blunt is a no?
- Technical to plain: which terms stay because customers use them?
Two lines per dial is enough. The aim is to stop a support agent writing like a lawyer on Monday and a comedian on Tuesday, not to flatten everyone into the same robot.
Write rules a new hire can follow
Rules should be testable. If you cannot check a draft against a rule, it is decoration. Useful examples: use contractions in marketing copy and avoid them in legal notices; open emails with the reason for writing, not with a pleasantry; never use more than two adjectives before a noun; write numbers as digits above nine; address the reader as you, and the company as we.
Add a short list of banned phrases taken from your own archive. If three pages say cutting-edge solutions, put that phrase on the list with a plain replacement. This section does more work than any paragraph about tone, because it catches the exact habits that make writing sound generic.
Rules earn their place only when a writer can point at a line and say this breaks rule four.
Show the difference, side by side
Every guide needs three or four before-and-after pairs. Take a real sentence from your site and rewrite it. Do not use invented examples, because invented ones are always too easy and teach the wrong lesson.
For instance, a shipping page might read: We are committed to ensuring a seamless delivery experience for all of our valued customers. The rewrite: Orders ship within one working day. You will get a tracking link by email, usually before 6pm.
Label what changed: two abstractions gone, a promise replaced by a fact, a time added, the word valued cut. When people see the mechanics, they can repeat them elsewhere.
Cover the awkward moments too
Most guides describe the happy path and fall apart during an outage, a price rise, or a refund refusal. Write the hard versions while nobody is under pressure. How do you open a message about downtime? What does a rejection sound like when the customer is right to be annoyed?
This is also where you decide what the brand never does: no exclamation marks in bad news, no blaming a third party by name, no jokes about money.
Put it where the writing happens
A guide in a shared drive is a guide nobody reads. Keep a one-page summary pinned in the place where drafts get written, whether that is a docs tool, a project template, or a channel topic. Put the long version one click away. Review it twice a year and delete rules the team ignores, because a rule that is routinely broken quietly teaches people that the document is optional.
- Ten good samples annotated
- Five bad samples with notes
- Four dials with default positions
- Twelve testable rules
- Banned phrases and replacements
- Four before-and-after pairs
- Sentences for bad news
- Owner and review date
None of this takes long. A morning of reading old pages, an afternoon of writing, one review with the people who answer customers. The document will not make everyone a great writer. It will make the writing recognisably yours, which is the job.
