Tone of voice

What is tone of voice and why does it matter?

The words people use tell you something about their personality. Are they friendly? Do they see you as an equal? Or are they talking at you rather than with you? It’s the same with organisations or brands. Think of the difference between Waitrose and Tesco. They don’t sound the same and you wouldn’t expect them to either.

The way we communicate in writing or in person – our tone of voice – helps people understand the kind of organisation we are.

When we write in a way that reflects our values and our personality, we can connect with the people we need to and get our message across. Our copy should be friendly and authoritative, and make references to what makes AbilityNet unique where relevant.

How we position ourselves

We have been the trailblazers for accessibility and assistive technologies for more than 25 years and we continue to provide a range of exceptional free services for disabled people, their family and friends, their employers and other people who care for them.

Our people and volunteers are experts. We use the word expert wherever relevant to underline the value of what they offer and the relevance of their specalist skills in meeting the needs of our charitable and commercial clients.

Writing for our communications – some pointers

• Be bold. Use bold language that confidently talks about our work and the change we are making happen. We transform. We change. We do. We don’t need to be modest about our achievements or our ambitions.
• Be exciting and inspiring. The work we do is exciting. It helps change the lives of people and empowers them. Let's bring that excitement and passion into our copy. AbilityNet is for everyone.
• Keep sentences short. Get to the point quickly and don’t overload your sentences with too many thoughts. A useful guide is around 25 words per sentence, around four sentences per paragraph, and around six to eight words per headline. This helps create a clear narrative that people can easily navigate and helps get your message across too.
• Use headings, subheading and bullets. Think about how people access and read information today. Reading is rarely an uninterrupted, linear process. People look for the immediate: the headline, the first few words, a caption or a subheading. Make it easy for them by using short, engaging headlines and subheadings. Use pull-out quotes or captions to make clear what comes next.
• Be specific. Avoid writing in vague, general terms. Be specific and illustrate what you say using examples, case studies and real-life stories where you can. This all helps show the change we create.
• Use facts and figures. This isn’t always necessary or appropriate, but where we have facts or statistics to back up, evidence or illustrate what we’re writing, use them.
• Read your writing out loud. Does it sound a bit stiff? If you’re tripping over your words or feel unnatural saying it, the tone isn’t quite right.
• Use everyday English where possible. Try to avoid formal, ‘corporate speak’ and use conversational, natural language instead. This doesn’t just sound more human – it’s easier to understand too. Sometimes we need to use technical terminology. When we do, think about the audience and whether all of them will understand it. If not everyone will be familiar with the term, include a short, plain English definition of it. Once you’ve done that, you can revert to using the technical term on its own.

Writing for the web

As users tend to read content at the top of the page and drift off towards the bottom of the page, use the inverted pyramid principles to ensure that you make your key point at the top of the page.

Don’t use poor referral language that won't mean anything to someone with a possible visual impairment, for example: 'refer to the section below’; ‘for more information see the section below’. Instead you can use ‘go to’, then name the section. And rather than using words like ‘user’ we prefer ‘people’ – that is what we are after all.

• Never use device-specific language when referring to a link; in particular ‘click here’ should never be used.
• Link text always needs to be descriptive; ‘find out more’ without providing an explanation about what is unacceptable.
• When writing content for online purposes, the underline tool rather than a colour or font-weight change should be used denote a hyperlink.
• Calls to action (CTAs) make it crystal clear what happens when a person might click a button to send something like a form.

Punctuation

• Never put two spaces after a full stop – this is a hangover from the days of the typewriter!
• Use commas on either side of sub-clauses – Jon Bernstein, the editor in chief, said…
• Avoid abbreviations that may not be universally understood – these include ie (use that is), eg (use for example) and etc (use and so on).
• Don’t use ampersands (&) except in brand names.
• Don’t use full stops in abbreviations. Correct – US. BBC. Dr. Mr, St Incorrect – U.S. B.B.C., Dr., Mr., St.
• Use double quotation marks for words, phrases and sentences from a clearly identified source.
• Start quotations with a capital letter if they are preceded by a colon.
• Use single quotation marks in headlines, or link headings when referring to words or publications – for example, Download the article ‘Understanding Capital Gains Tax’.

Use apostrophes with care – their position varies with single and plural use. For example: 'The developer’s book' means 'The book belonging to one person', but 'The developers’ book' means the book belongs to a number of developers.

Avoid inserting possessive apostrophes where they don’t belong – for example, when indicating a decade:

Correct = the 1990s

Incorrect = the 1990’s

A note on grammar and spelling

We use UK English, not American (you can change your setting in Microsoft to use the UK dictionary if requried).

Lots of text written all in upper case is not appropiate for our audience or anyone who may have difficulties reading.

All headings and sub headings should be in sentence case as this is easier for people to read.

We only ever capitalise

• proper nouns – people’s names, towns and cities, countries, organisations or terms like Parkinson's or Asperger syndrome
• nationalities, languages and religions
• days of the week and months of the year
• headlines and subheads are always sentence case
• when we use brand names, we follow the brand owners’ guide on when and where to use capitalisation: iPad; iPhone; eBay; AbilityNet.
• :

We don't ever capitalise:

• job titles - these should always be lower case
• terms such as autistic
• the word 'free' - we don't need to shout this at people, it is implicit

Contractions

We use contractions (‘you’re’, ‘we’re’). Some contractions like ‘should’ve’ and ‘could’ve’, are a bit too colloquial (and clumsy) – avoid these. It’s fine to mix contractions and full versions. This mostly depends on the rhythm you want in your writing, and what you want to emphasise.

We use the Guardian style guide as our reference. Take a look there if you have any specific questions that are not covered in this tone of voice guidance.

Abbreviations and acronyms

If there’s a chance your reader won’t recognise an abbreviation or acronym, spell it out the first time you mention it. Then use the short version for all other references. For example, “Follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make sure your web pages are accessible to all.”

Content delivery network (CDN)

Application Programming Interface (API)

User experience (UX)

British Sign Language (BSL)

Disability Language Guide

We have a Disability Language Guide available to AbilityNet staff, including an A-Z glossary of terms for quick reference. 

Numbers

Use words for numbers between one and nine and numerals for the number 10 onwards. And spell out a number when it begins a sentence. Otherwise, use the numeral. This includes ordinals.

Ten new employees started on Monday, and 12 start next week.

Sometimes it feels odd to use the numeral. If it’s an expression that typically uses spelled-out numbers, leave them that way.

That is a third-party integration.

Numbers over 3 digits get commas as this makes it easier for people to read:

• 999
• 1,000
• 150,000
• use full figures for the thousands 1,000, 10,000, 110,000.
• for millions, use m and decimals – 1m, 1.5m, 20m.
• for billions, use bn and decimals – 1bn, 1.5bn, 20bn.
• always use decimals and never fractions – if necessary, round to two decimal places as in 1.99.
• with ordinal numbers, use first, second, third, up to ninth, then 10th, 11th and so on.
• use words for per cent, not %, except in tables, charts and infographic.

Lists and bullet points

The purpose of bullet points is to highlight key points. They should never be used extensively.

• Use solid, round bullet points.
• Try to introduce all lists with a sentence.
• Never have a list with only one bullet item – make this an ordinary sentence.
• If the bullet points are full sentences, begin with a capital letter and put a full stop at the end of each one.
• Where the bullet points are a continuation of a sentence use a colon to introduce them and use lower case at the start of the bullet. The final item should end in a full stop.
• If you are not using a colon, use capital letters at the start of each point.
• If long bullets are required use normal sentence punctuation.
• We can use semi-colons, commas and a dash to split sentences up in a bullet point but don’t use a full stop – don’t use sentences within bullet points; where possible start another bullet point or use dashes or semi-colons to expand on an item.
• Don’t use ‘or’, or ‘and’ to separate the final two bullets in a list.

Dates

Generally, spell out the day of the week and the month. Abbreviate only if space is an issue within the piece you’re producing.

Monday 24 January 2020

24.01.20

Times

We work internationally, so for events and training, use the 24 hour clock to ensure it’s clear of the start and end times wherever people are in the world.

09.30 – 14.00

15.00 – 17.00

Show don't tell people

Copy is king, and good quality copy and content is great for SEO and detail-orientated users, but how can we also show what AbilityNet does?

• Could we have example files of what testing looks like?
• A sample of what the report looks like?
• What are common mistakes people make so they can get clear on ’why’ the need help and support?