You came here for all things tone of voice, and by jingo that’s what you’re going to get.
We’ve been collecting and judging any other public tone of voice guidelines we can find. Partly because that’s our jam. Partly, because it makes the tone of voice guides we create even better.
Brand guidelines are all well and good, but with hundreds of pages comparing colour palettes and font styles, tone of voice is rarely given the attention it deserves. Normally, it’s a single page with some arbitrary buzzwords saying your brand should be ‘fun’. It’s a damn shame, especially when copy makes up the cornerstone of everything you do online.
These brands haven’t done that. They’ve created fully fleshed out tone of voice guidelines which mean something. These brands are cool. Learn from them.
Here’s what we’ve found (in no particular order)
The RNLI's tone of voice guidelines:
The RNLI is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It's a British charity that saves lives at sea. They also have a great set of tone of voice guidelines specifically aimed at reaching younger audiences.
The University of Leeds tone of voice guidelines:
Beautifully designed and with a beautiful tone of voice, this is one of the most comprehensive guides we’ve come across.
The University of Dundee tone of voice guidelines:
Home to 16k students, the University of Dundee has compiled a rather good guide with some fine examples of how to communicate their tone of voice.
Monzo's tone of voice guidelines:
Monzo is a neobank based in the UK. In the past few years they’ve done an incredible job at building a passionate userbase with the aim of shaking up the traditionalist banking industry.
Buffer's tone of voice guidelines:
Buffer is a rather nifty social media management/engagement tool with over 4.5 million users worldwide.
Shelter's tone of voice guidelines:
Shelter is a wonderful charity based in the UK that helps with housing and homelessness. Their tone of voice section in their brand guidelines is an excellent inspiration for how important it is to talk about people with compassion.
Gov.uk's tone of voice guidelines:
Finding a tone of voice which works for the population of an entire country is no easy feat. Thankfully, the team behind gov.uk, the government portal for the UK, manages it well with a brief but brilliant section on their official tone of voice.
Audi's tone of voice guidelines:
German car manufacturer Audi has a comprehensive set of tone of voice guidelines as part of their much bigger brand identity hub. Includes several samples for how to and how to not write like Audi.
Skype's tone of voice guidelines:
The worldwide communications tool has one of the best brand book’s we’ve seen with all things tone of voice starting on Page 26.
Greenpeace's tone of voice guidelines:
Greenpeace are the international environmental organisation who are trying to make the world a better place.
Mailchimp's tone of voice guidelines:
Mailchimp are an Atlanta based major player in the email marketing software space with over 16 million accounts from across the world.
Slack's tone of voice guidelines:
Slack is a ‘business communication platform’. In other words, a rather effective alternative to internal email. Something like MSN Messenger if you’re old enough to remember that.
NOTES:
These tone of voice guides are the one’s that are publicly available. As you’d expect there’s other businesses out there who have tone of voice guides which are hidden out of sight. Because the new wave of tech companies and charities are open and honest with what goes on behind the scenes this is why they dominate the list
If you’re enraged because you know of other epic tone of voice guides that we haven’t included then please funnel that anger into an email at info[@]thewaywithwords.co.uk and we’ll get it added