Before you invest in tone of voice

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Before you spend anything on tone of voice, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Write like a knowledgeable person talking, not a brochure
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Warning signs

Consistency builds recognition. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Jargon signals insecurity more often than expertise. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The short version

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Three things worth confirming about tone of voice before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Consistency builds recognition — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.