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Fill in this workbook as you go. Each section has a “Concept review” dropdown underneath it. These explain the concept behind the section, not a rule to follow. Your brand might land somewhere different than the examples show, and that’s fine.
Fill in the Core sections first. They’re the foundation. Only fill in the Optional sections that apply to your channels, customer profile, product, and personality. It’s fine to leave an optional section blank and come back to it later.
1

Start with the core sections

These are the foundation of your brand voice.
2

Add optional sections as needed

Use them only where they apply to your channels, customer profile, product, and personality.
3

Keep it example-heavy

A real line of copy is more useful than a vague adjective.
4

Use it as a decision-making tool

When copy feels off, this document should help explain why and how to fix it.

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Core sections

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1. Voice vs. tone

In a sentence or two, describe how our voice stays the same no matter who we’re talking to: E.g. We’re direct, warm, and confident in every piece of copy, whether it’s a homepage headline or a one-line error message. How does our tone shift depending on the moment (e.g., talking to a close customer vs. someone who needs help)? E.g. In a launch announcement we’re upbeat and energetic. In an error message or support reply we slow down, stay calm, and focus on getting the reader unstuck.
Voice and tone get used interchangeably, but they answer different questions. Voice answers “who is speaking?” and stays fixed. Tone answers “what’s the emotional register right now?” and moves with the situation.The same person can be excited at a party and quiet at a funeral without having two personalities. That’s the relationship between voice and tone: a brand can sound very different in an outage notice than in a product launch without becoming a different brand, because the underlying personality never actually changes, only its volume and warmth do.

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2. Voice traits

Choose 3 to 5 core traits. Each one needs a name, a description, a contrast (what it’s not), and a bad and good example. Generic traits like “friendly” or “innovative” only become useful once defined for your brand specifically.

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Voice trait 1

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Voice trait 2

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Voice trait 3

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Voice trait 4 (optional, add if you’re using 4 to 5 traits)

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Voice trait 5 (optional, add if you’re using 4 to 5 traits)

A trait like “friendly” or “bold” doesn’t tell a writer much on its own, since almost any line of copy could be called friendly by someone. The contrast is what turns a trait into something usable: “bold, not reckless” tells a writer not just what to reach for, but where the trait stops.Without a contrast, a trait tends to get stretched to justify whatever a writer already wanted to write.

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3. Tone principles

Before writing, ask: what does the reader need right now? What are they feeling? How familiar are they with us? Is this high stakes or low stakes? Add rows for any other recurring situations.
This table exists to answer one repeated question fast: given this situation, what tone fits? Without it, that question gets re-litigated informally every time someone drafts an error message or a launch email, and the answer quietly drifts depending on who’s writing that day.Writing the answer down once, per situation, is what keeps a hundred small tone decisions pointed the same direction.

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4. Voice and tone in practice

This is the most important section for day-to-day writing. For each situation, write a generic or off-brand version and then your on-brand rewrite. Add rows for other channels as needed.
Traits and principles are abstractions. This section is where they get tested against real sentences.A writer under deadline is far more likely to reference “here’s what our on-brand pricing copy sounds like” than to reason forward from “we are direct, not blunt.” The before-and-after pairs here are usually what people reach for once a guide is actually in daily use, even though the traits are what got written down first.

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5. Core style rules

Check off the defaults you’re keeping, uncheck and delete any that don’t fit, and add brand-specific rules at the end.
  • Use active voice.
  • Use contractions where they sound natural.
  • Write in plain language.
  • Keep sentences short when clarity matters.
  • Use “you” when speaking directly to the reader.
  • Use “we” when the brand is taking action or responsibility.
  • Avoid jargon unless the customer profile expects it.
  • Avoid vague hype.
  • Be specific instead of sounding impressive.
  • Use examples when a claim needs proof.
  • Lead with the point.
  • Make CTAs clear and action-oriented.
  • Never use em dashes. Use a period, comma, colon, or parentheses instead.
  • [add brand-specific rule]
These are mechanical, not philosophical: sentence length, contractions, active voice. They matter only in service of whatever voice was defined above, not as standalone principles.That’s also why they’re not universal. A brand writing for engineers might keep jargon a brand with a broader customer profile would cut, on purpose, because the jargon signals credibility to that specific reader rather than confusing them. “Avoid jargon” is downstream of a decision about the customer profile, not a rule that applies everywhere equally.

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Optional sections

Include only the sections below that apply to your brand. Delete any you skip before publishing.

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A. Tone-by-channel matrix

Optional: include if the brand shows up across many content types
Fill in tone, how much personality to use, and any notes for each channel.
Some brands keep the same amount of personality everywhere, homepage, support, and error messages included. Others turn personality up or down by channel. Neither approach is more correct.What actually breaks trust is inconsistency nobody chose on purpose, personality that’s high in one support reply and flat in the next for no reason. This matrix is where a brand writes down which approach it’s taking, channel by channel, so the choice can be checked against instead of re-argued each time.

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B. Point of view and pronoun rules

Optional: include if copy includes product screens, transactional emails, onboarding, notifications, or support content
When do you use “you”? When do you use “we”? Is first-person singular (“I”) ever used, and by whom (mascot, founder, assistant)? E.g. We use “you” when guiding the reader through the product, as in “You can assign tasks to teammates.” We use “we” when Dough Labs is taking responsibility, as in “We fixed the bug you reported.” We never use “I” since Dough Labs has no mascot or single named speaker.
A reader moving through a product, an email, a notification, is implicitly asking “who is talking to me right now?” every time the pronoun shifts. If “we” becomes “the team” becomes “you can also…” with no pattern, that question never quite gets answered clearly.Nothing here is individually wrong, but the accumulated effect is a reader who can’t quite place who’s speaking. Fixing the pronoun pattern is a small, cheap way to remove that friction.

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C. Humor and wit

Optional: include if the brand has any level of playfulness
Where and how do you use humor? Where is it off-limits (e.g., errors, health, money, frustration)? E.g. Light humor is fine in social posts and release notes, for example: “Bug squashed. It didn’t stand a chance.” Humor is off-limits in error messages, billing communications, and support replies about a cancellation.
Brands land in very different places on humor, and both extremes can work when they’re deliberate. Some keep humor entirely out of error messages, since a joke when something’s broken can read as not taking the problem seriously. Others build humor into exactly those moments and it lands, because the humor is core to who they are rather than a mismatch with the situation.What doesn’t work is humor that shows up inconsistently: present in some error messages, absent in others, for no reason a reader could ever guess.

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D. Inclusive and global customer profile language

Optional: include if the brand writes for a broad or international customer profile
What idioms, references, or assumptions should you avoid? Any specific inclusive-language notes for your customer profile? E.g. Avoid idioms like “hit it out of the park,” since they don’t translate well. Use “team” instead of “guys.” Avoid time references like “end of day” without naming a time zone.
An idiom or reference that reads as natural to one reader can read as confusing, or quietly exclude another. This section is closer to a risk ledger than a ban list.It’s where a brand decides how much of that risk it’s willing to accept, and for how much of its actual customer profile, rather than pretending the risk isn’t there.

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E. Handling bad news, apologies, and sensitive topics

Optional: include if the brand communicates about errors, outages, pricing changes, delays, or other sensitive topics
How do you acknowledge issues and apologize? What do you avoid (e.g., cheerful language, stiff legal language)? E.g. State what happened, apologize once, then explain the fix. Example: “Dough Labs was down for 40 minutes today because of a database issue. Service is restored, and we’re adding monitoring to catch this earlier next time.” Avoid cheerful language and avoid stiff legal phrasing unless legally required.
Readers tend to remember how a brand communicated bad news longer than they remember most other copy. That’s what raises the stakes on this section compared to the others.It doesn’t mean a brand’s usual personality has to disappear here entirely. Some brands keep more of it than others in these moments. It does mean the choice deserves more deliberation than an ordinary product update would get.

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F. Content-type-specific principles

Optional: include if multiple teams write for the same brand
Marketing copy E.g. Lead with what the reader can now do, not the feature name. Product copy E.g. Every button label describes the action, not the feature. Use “Add task,” not “Task Creator.” Support copy E.g. Always name the specific problem before the fix. Use “Your export failed because the file was too large,” not “There was an error.”
Marketing copy is trying to persuade. Product copy is trying to instruct. Support copy is trying to resolve. Those are different jobs, even inside the same brand voice, and copy optimized purely for one job can undercut another. A persuasive headline pattern in a support reply can read as evasive, for instance, right when a reader wants a straight answer.Naming each team’s job here is what keeps the differences between them intentional instead of accidental.

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G. Word list and terminology guide

Optional: include if there are product terms, category language, or banned words writers need to use consistently
Without a shared list, two writers will independently invent two different names for the same feature. A reader who sees both will reasonably wonder if they’re actually the same thing.This table exists to prevent that: one name per concept, written down once, so nobody has to reinvent it in every draft.

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H. Brand mascot or character voice

Optional: include if the brand has a mascot, avatar, founder voice, assistant, or recurring character
Does the character speak? When does it appear? What would it never say? E.g. Dough Labs has no mascot or character voice. All copy speaks as the brand itself, using “we,” not as a persona.
An undefined character drifts. Different writers imagine slightly different versions of what it would say, and over enough copy those versions pull apart into something inconsistent.This section only matters if a character actually exists. Most brands don’t have one, and “no mascot” is a complete, valid answer here, not a gap to fill in.

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I. Rationale and rollout

Optional: include if the guide needs to be adopted by multiple people or teams
Why does this guide exist? How should it be used (onboarding, copy reviews, revisiting cadence)? E.g. This guide exists because the website, app, and support replies used to sound like three different companies. New writers read this guide during onboarding. Reviewers check new copy against Section 4 before publishing.
A guide that exists but that nobody was told to use, or told why it exists, tends to get quietly skipped the first time a deadline gets tight.This section is what turns the guide from a document into an actual habit: attaching it to onboarding, to review, to a revisit cadence, so it gets used rather than just sitting there.
Last modified on July 21, 2026