Find the attributes that actually distinguish your voice
A tone-of-voice document lists the words, sentence shapes and choices that make your writing sound like your brand. Most first attempts go wrong at the same point: three adjectives on a slide, usually friendly, professional and trustworthy, none of which a writer can check a sentence against. An attribute only earns its place in the document if you can put a wrong version next to a right one and explain why yours suits this reader.
Work from copy you have already published. Pull a product page, three emails, an advert and a piece of customer support text, and read them together. Note where the writing genuinely differs from a competitor's and where it is simply adequate. The differences that survive that comparison are your real starting attributes; everything else is wishful thinking dressed as strategy.
Turn each adjective into a rule
"Friendly" gives a writer nothing to do at their desk. "Use the reader's first name where you have it, and write sentences the way a colleague would say them out loud" tells them exactly what to check for. Every attribute in the document should convert into an instruction of that shape, something a writer can hold a sentence up against and either pass or fail.
A useful check while drafting: for each attribute, write one sentence that follows it and one that breaks it, using the same piece of information in both. If a convincing wrong version will not come, the attribute is not doing any work and can be dropped.
Write the document so a stranger could use it unaided
The finished document should read as a working reference. Five or six attributes is usually enough; a list of fifteen gives a new writer nothing to hold onto, because no one checks a sentence against fifteen things at once. Each entry needs a short definition stated as what the attribute is, a do example, a don't example built from the same fact, and one line on why the distinction matters for this particular brand.
- The attribute name and a one-sentence definition of what it is.
- A do example and a don't example, both written from the same underlying fact so the contrast is visible.
- One line of reasoning: why this choice suits the reader this brand is actually writing for.
The glossary carries definitions of terms such as tone of voice and body copy if you need a shared reference point when briefing a writer who is new to the vocabulary: The Copywriter's Glossary.
Apply the voice across every touchpoint
A voice defined only for the homepage and adverts will not survive contact with the rest of the business, because most of what a reader sees is smaller than that: order confirmations, error messages, the short pieces of interface text such as button labels and form hints (microcopy). Each touchpoint compresses the voice differently. An advert has room for a full sentence and a turn of phrase; a button label has three words and no room for personality beyond the verb you choose.
Where voice is easiest to lose
Automated emails, system-generated error messages and first drafts written with an AI tool are where a brand's voice slips fastest, usually because nobody thought of them as "copy" in the first place. An AI draft in particular tends to default to a generic, competent register unless it is given the document and specific examples to work from. The guide on writing with AI without losing your tone covers how to brief a tool so the output still sounds like you: How to Write With AI Without Sounding Like It.
Test whether the voice is actually being followed
A document that nobody checks copy against is just a page in a drawer. The test is simple: take a handful of recently published pieces, remove any names or logos, and see whether someone unfamiliar with the business can match each piece to the attribute it is supposed to demonstrate. If they cannot, either the writing has drifted or the attribute was never specific enough to be checkable, and the document needs revising.
Where an attribute specifies something measurable, such as a sentence-length range or a reading age, you can check drift directly. Running recent copy through a readability check shows whether sentence length has moved away from what the document set out: Readability and Clarity Checker. A tool score is a number, so treat it as one input alongside the human comparison above.
A worked example: a hypothetical UK brand
Take a small outdoor-clothing business selling waterproof jackets direct to customers online, invented here to show the method. Reading its published copy together shows two things worth keeping: it never dramatises the weather, and it explains fabric choices in terms of what the wearer does. Those become two attributes.
- Understated about conditions. Definition: state what the jacket is built to handle without invoking storms or extremes for effect. Don't: "Built to survive the very worst British weather can throw at you." Do: "Keeps you dry through a normal wet commute and a full day walking in rain." Reasoning: the audience already lives with British weather and does not need it sold back to them as drama.
- Explains fabric through use, not specification. Definition: describe what a material does for the wearer before naming it. Don't: "3-layer laminate construction with a hydrostatic head of 20,000mm." Do: "The outer layer keeps rain out; the inner lining stops you sweating into it on the walk back." Reasoning: most buyers are choosing a jacket, not judging a fabric spec sheet.
Applied to a product page, that gives a first line built around the walk to the station. Applied to an order-confirmation email, it means the same restraint: "Your jacket is on its way." The attributes are the same in both places; only the length changes.