Voice and Tone

"Tone of voice isn’t what we say but how we say it. It’s the language we use, the way we construct sentences, the sound of our words and the personality we communicate."

Finding your tone of voice - Smashing Magazine

I've looked a bit at voice and tone when considering the product name and pitch, but I need to consider Hidden's brand dictionary too.

Tone of voice dimensions - NNGroup

NNGroup seem to have done the hard work for us collating a list of 37 website specific tone words and identified 4 tone of voice dimensions;

• Funny vs. serious: Trying to be humorous? Or is the subject approached in a serious way?
• Formal vs. casual: Is the writing formal? Informal? Casual?
• Respectful vs. irreverent: Approach the subject in a respectful way? Or an irreverent approach?
• Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact: Enthusiastic about the subject? Is the organization excited about the service or product, or the information it conveys? Or is the writing dry and matter-of-fact?

It provides some great examples for how you can approach these dimensions too. I need to remember that tone of voice isn't just about the written content, it includes the visuals as well as your imagery should match your copy. I believe my target tone profile to be more casual and enthusiastic, I want to engage directly with the user and encourage the travel excitement through my use of words.

Tone of voice - Gov.uk

The obvious example of a good brand dictionary is gov.uk, it's content is clear and straightforward therefore easy to understand as their statistic shows "1 in 5 adults has a reading age of between 9 and 13". The target audience for Hidden is 16-60+ and therefore the content needs to be understood from both sides of the age range. I definitely want to work on my copywriting skills as we all know that users read very little and in fact just scan the page for key words.

Tone of Voice - Monzo

Monzo have recently shared their tone of voice and I think it's a very useful example. One of the points that stood out the most to me was "We use the language our audience uses". Avoid business speak by swapping formal words for normal ones. Use more verbs and fewer nouns, 'We decided to' instead of 'We made the decision to', it's more personal as if you're talking directly to the user. And use the words of your audience, 'money' instead of 'funds'.

Try to keep your sentences under 20 words as they’re more accessible for people who struggle with reading or have a cognitive disability, like dyslexia. Research also shows that when your average sentence length is 14 words, people understand over 90% of it.