Tone of Voice Guidelines
Tone of voice is how your brand sounds in writing — warm or formal, playful or precise. Consistent tone makes you recognisable and builds trust, especially when several people write on your behalf across a website, emails and support.
Guidelines capture that voice so a new writer, agency or support agent can match it without second-guessing. They turn an instinctive sense of how we sound into something anyone can apply.
What Good Guidelines Include
Effective guidelines are concrete and easy to act on, not a list of vague adjectives that everyone interprets differently.
- A few words that describe the voice, such as clear, confident, friendly.
- Do and don't examples for tricky situations.
- Rules on jargon, contractions and humour.
- Guidance on how tone shifts for apologies or errors.
Why Examples Beat Adjectives
Telling a writer to be approachable is subjective. Showing a sentence rewritten from stiff to approachable removes the doubt entirely. We pair each principle with a before-and-after so the rule is unmistakable and writers can copy the pattern with confidence.
Keeping Tone Consistent
Tone drifts as teams grow and people come and go. A short reference, baked into your editing checklist, keeps everyone aligned without slowing them down, and it makes onboarding a new writer far quicker.
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Utilise our solution | Use our tool |
| We apologise for the inconvenience caused | Sorry about that — here is what we are doing |
| Please be advised that | Please note |
If you need a hand with any of this, your Progressive Robot delivery team is ready to help. Raise a ticket from the Support area of your client portal or speak to your account manager and we will guide you through the next steps.