Here’s an inside scoop from the world of copywriting: nobody in the long and occasionally ignominious history of the profession has ever read a tone of voice (TOV) handbook.

It literally just doesn’t happen.

It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into it.

It doesn’t matter that you spent hours painstakingly selecting a font to perfectly embody the “liquid assets, solid advice” vibe you’re trying to convey.

And it certainly doesn’t matter that you hired a consultant to tell you exactly which five adjectives your brand’s “personality” feels like.

Sure, writers might say they gave it a read – and that there’s some useful stuff in there. But they’re lying.

Don’t take it personally. It’s just that the last thing anyone really wants to do when they have deadlines to deal with is spend a few hours reading some marketing director’s brain dump about “brand identity”.

But trust me, as someone who spent the better part of a decade in the content trenches, if it were possible for PDFs to gather dust, your TOV guidelines would be buried under a thick layer by now.

And here’s the thing – that’s not necessarily bad. In fact, you might want to consider going one step further and consigning that guidelines document to the bottom of your recycle bin.

Here’s why.

They’re not made for writers

Firstly, TOV handbooks are almost always written by and for stakeholders – the turgid result of some sort of rebrand or consultancy effort – not writers with boots on the ground. That’s a mistake, because it means that when it comes to the operational reality of creating content, they’re functionally useless.

Let’s think about the typical sort of thing you might see in a TOV document:

“We speak with authority, using fresh, human language to disrupt the usual tone of financial services.”

Sounds good, right? But what on earth does it mean?

How am I, as a writer, supposed to apply that to my work? It’s a classic case of telling, not showing. Instead of a soupy puddle of adjectives cooked up in a lab, give me practical advice about how to express these qualities.

Try this instead:

“Use direct address, contractions, and short sentences. Consider using metaphors to explain technical concepts, but avoid slang.”

Now, that’s the kind of practical guidance a writer can use to create tonally appropriate copy for your brand, without any meaningless fluff getting in the way.

There’s too much scaffolding

Secondly, they’re too long. Why do I need to read a 150-page document to understand how Nando’s talks about chicken? (This is an illustrative example that is not based on any past experience I may or may not have writing blog posts for the nation’s favourite chicken merchant.)

Look, I’m not averse to a good read, but isn’t concision supposed to be the hallmark of great writing? Isn’t that, ultimately, what Ernest Hemingway died for?

Honestly, it shouldn’t be that complicated: keep it short, simple, and succinct.

I’d say – on a purely practical level – two sides of A4 is the absolute limit. Anything beyond that, and you’re pushing it.

It’s an external rulebook, not an embedded feature

For me, this is the biggest issue with TOV documents.

Rather than being embedded within the content workflow – for example, within the CMS, design files, or editorial checklist – tone guidelines are too often hidden away in some obscure SharePoint folder. It becomes a single, static document, isolated from the task it’s meant to support.

This is one of the main reasons why TOV files calcify into symbolic artefacts. In the worst-case scenario, they become manifestoes nobody reads, last updated sometime during the Sunak premiership.

Here’s what I think – it’s time for the old-fashioned TOV handbook to be retired.

• It’s static when it should be dynamic.
• It’s top-down when it should be collaborative.
• It’s over-engineered when it should emerge naturally from existing content.

Fundamentally, it’s a device with tremendous potential value that isn’t being used effectively.

Let’s change that.

Building a new tonal framework for your brand

Here’s how you can revitalise your brand’s TOV guidelines and make them genuinely useful for the writers on your team.

Turn it into a collaborative endeavour

Firstly, let’s shift from thinking about TOV as an edict from up on high to an evolving dialogue between everyone on the team. That’s not just writers, but also designers, marketers, and support staff.

Hold regular workshops or clinics where you critique and adapt examples together. Build tone out from an ongoing, collaborative editorial culture, rather than a top-down decree. Put another way, focus on creating a shared writing culture rather than a prescriptive rulebook.

Practical instructions beat abstract principles

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have any kind of document that states definitively what your brand sounds like. However, that document should be a) short, and b) built around contextual guidance, rather than abstract principles. Here are a few tips to get started:

• Think cheat sheets, checklists, and slides, rather than a dense instruction manual. Here’s a rule of thumb – if you have to include a table of contents to help people navigate the guide, you’ve gone overboard.
• Provide situational examples and show how the company’s tone can flex between blog posts, social captions, email nurtures, and so on. Avoid the meaningless parade of adjectives I touched upon above and provide practical linguistic patterns and examples for writers to follow.
• Generic descriptors don’t help anyone, but a bank of “sounds like us” and “doesn’t sound like us” voice swipes can be a fantastic shorthand for helping your team tap into the way your brand communicates.

Go from static to dynamic tone of voice management

Next, rethink your TOV as something emergent, created from content audits, feedback loops, and examples.

Why not allow tone to emerge from what’s already resonating with your audience?

Look at your existing content that’s performing well, then reverse-engineer tone from there. Encouraging your team to share real-world examples of great writing you’ve already produced within a collaborative document can be an effective way to foster ongoing tonal refinement.

Responsive TOV management should essentially be a dynamic system – a living library of examples refined over time.

Embed tone where it really lives

Finally, I want to touch upon the idea of integrating tone where it’s most useful. Think about embedding guidance directly into the tools your writers already use when authoring and reviewing their work, such as:

• Content templates in Google Docs or Word
• Collaborative Notion files
• Custom Grammarly tone profiles
• In-line comments on Figma
• Peer review checklists.

Another supplemental strategy you could explore is the idea of integrating tone into your project management workflow. Include tone reminders in task descriptions for content tasks or set up Slack and Teams bots to provide quick links to TOV guidelines when drafts are shared. Doing this, you can make tone an integral part of your content creation process, rather than an external rulebook that’s often ignored.

Beyond that, you could look into automating tone wherever possible. Template-driven CMS fields (that include pre-filled snippets with recommended tone or CTAs) and reusable content blocks can save time and ensure that appropriate tone is baked into the work you’re producing.

Tone shouldn’t just be an element of brand identity; it should be an active feature of content design. The easiest way to help writers consistently infuse your preferred tone is to bring guidance directly into the tools and processes where they actually work.

Get in touch

If you think your tone of voice may have grown a little stale and you’re looking for a refresh, you’re in the right place.

Here at Yardstick, we’re dedicated to helping you communicate with your audience in a way that’s authentic, meaningful, and engaging.

For more information, please email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.