| name | brand-voice-guide |
| description | Use when defining or applying the house voice so a book, a newsletter issue, and a podcast episode read as one publisher — the reference every brief cites and every copy edit enforces. |
Brand Voice Guide
Three formats, one publisher. The voice is what a reader recognizes before they see the logo. This is the standard that briefs cite and copy editing enforces.
Steps
- State the voice in adjectives with edges. Pick a few traits and, for each, the trait it is not — "plainspoken, not flat," "confident, not glib." A trait with no opposite is decoration, not a rule.
- Anchor with paired examples. For each trait, write a short on-voice line and the off-voice version beside it. Editors settle far more disputes from examples than from adjectives.
- Set the mechanics. Decide the recurring calls — person and tense, contractions, sentence rhythm, how numbers and titles are written, the words the house prefers and the ones it avoids — so consistency is a lookup, not a debate.
- Map the voice across formats. Name how the one voice bends per surface: the book more measured, the newsletter more direct, the podcast more spoken — same identity, different register — so "on-voice" is defined for each.
- Apply it while drafting. Writers write to the guide, not to their own defaults; when a brief and the guide disagree, the disagreement is raised before drafting, not smoothed over after.
- Enforce it in copy edit. The copy editor flattens off-voice lines toward the guide and escalates only the genuine questions the guide does not settle — new territory, not restatements of a settled call.
- Keep it current. When a settled escalation creates a new rule, write it into the guide with its example so the next piece inherits the decision instead of relitigating it.
Quality bar
- Every trait carries its opposite and a paired on/off-voice example.
- Mechanics are decided, not left to each writer's habit.
- The voice's register is defined for all three formats.
- Escalations that set a precedent are written back into the guide.
Output format
A living voice guide: trait-and-opposite pairs with examples, a mechanics reference, per-format register notes, and a short changelog of precedent-setting decisions folded back in.
