The Secret to Consistent Voice, Tone, and Style 

The Secret to Consistent Voice, Tone, and Style 

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

Not long ago, I was asked what exactly I do. It’s not really a secret. I help organizations improve their existing content while making room for newly developed content—all while helping to ensure the final, overall experience for the target audience(s) is consistent. But the conversation got stuck on the word “consistent.”

Why is consistency important? How does one achieve it? Especially in technical content?

A consistent voice, tone, and style across documents and online content can be the difference between a cohesive user experience and a confusing jumble of instructions. We’ve all experienced it, right? That user manual or technical guide that feels like a dozen different people wrote it on a dozen different days. The information might be accurate, but the experience of reading it? Well, that’s another story.

So, let’s explore the real story of consistency in voice, tone, and style in technical communication, the pitfalls of inconsistency, and how to establish guidelines that ensure your content speaks with a single voice to the reader, no matter how it is generated or how many writers are involved.

Why Voice, Tone, and Style Matter

Let’s start with the what and the why. In any good piece of technical content, the “what” is usually a description, some definitions, and/or a list of components. Here are the definitions for the terms in the blog post.

  • Voice is the consistent personality that shines through a piece of writing. It is the foundational approach to a topic—formal, informal, conversational, professional—that forms the melody of your organization’s content. The Microsoft Writing Style Guide defines voice as “how we talk to people.” It describes the organization’s voice as “crisp simplicity” that also conveys warmth.

  • Tone is the emotional pitch of the content. Tone can be more flexible. While your organization’s voice might stay consistent, its tone might shift depending on the situation. Microsoft describes its tone as adaptable—”from serious to empathetic to lighthearted—to fit the context and customer’s state of mind.” For example, a troubleshooting article should have an empathetic tone.

  • Style refers to how content is written—how sentences are structured, the choice of words, the level of formality, and the use of grammar and punctuation. Style also includes how you present ideas, whether your writing is terse or elaborate, direct or nuanced. Many of these decisions are likely captured in your organization’s style guide. The Microsoft style guide, for example, allows contractions and favors simple words and concise sentences.

Some folks might think that questions of voice, tone, and style belong to the creative writing arena or perhaps to the marketing department. But if you write customer-facing content, take the time to understand how your organization approaches these important aspects of writing.

Here’s why (partially authored by ChatGPT):

  • Clarity and Cohesion:  If each content component on a website or in a document has a different style, sounding like it was written by a different person (because it probably was), the reader’s experience becomes fragmented. Imagine trying to understand a critical technical process when the style shifts between overly formal and unnecessarily casual. It would feel disjointed and unpolished. The reader might fail to understand or even miss essential information.

  • Brand Integrity:  Whether you’re creating technical content for internal use or external clients, your content reflects your organization. Consistency in voice, tone, and style reinforces professionalism, credibility, and trust.

  • Reader Engagement:  A unified voice, tone, and style make content easier to follow. The reader isn’t constantly adjusting to different styles and is likelier to understand the material—and keep reading. Careful consideration of the reader’s experience is especially important if some members of your audience use assistive technology for accessibility (and a few will).

  • Differentiator from AI:  Unless you are careful with your AI prompts or have an internal AI app that knows your organization’s style guide, your generated content might not offer the same approachability—or correctness—as human-written content. Some readers can “tell” if the content was AI-generated simply because it has a different voice, tone, or style.

  • Streamlined Collaboration: When multiple authors contribute to a content project, consistency in voice, tone, and style ensures a smoother writing process. Writers and editors can avoid heavily revising individual content components to make them flow cohesively. And new team members can be onboarded more quickly if an organization’s voice, tone, and style are well-documented in a style guide. My colleague Liz Fraley refers to style guides as “institutional memory.”

For more about my views on how to work with AI, review the following blog posts:

Common Pitfalls of Inconsistent Voice, Tone, and Style

Even experienced technical writers can make mistakes with voice, tone, and style. Sometimes we even carry those mistakes over into our personal lives. My father once accused me of using “corporate speak” when he and I were discussing his health issues.

Most mistakes occur when we lose sight of our audience and/or the circumstances under which they access the content. The following sections address some of these common mistakes (partially authored by ChatGPT).

Multiple Writers, Multiple Styles

Imagine you’re an editor working on a technical manual for a software product. One writer has a very formal, dense style, and another prefers a laid-back, conversational approach. When you piece their sections together, you end up with something like this:

  • Writer A: “The system shall be initialized by pressing the appropriate sequence of keys.”
  • Writer B: “To get things started, just hit the ‘Start’ button, and you’re good to go!”

Notice the differences in both style and tone. The first sentence is very formal and technical while the second is casual and chatty. Both are accurate, but the shift between these styles makes the document yield an inconsistent experience for the reader.

Tone Doesn’t Match the Context

Another common issue occurs when the writing tone doesn’t align with the content, which often affects the style as well. Use a lighthearted tone and overly simplistic style in troubleshooting instructions for a critical system error? Not the best idea. Conversely, writing in a convoluted or stiff style about an upcoming event is equally jarring. Writers should strive to match word choice, sentence length, and phrasing to the circumstances and audience needs.

Audience Needs a Different Level of Complexity

The most common pitfall is alienating the audience through inappropriate complexity or oversimplification. This is often a matter of style—specifically of word choice and level of detail. Writers cannot assume that readers have the same depth of knowledge of a product or length of service in the industry. A temptation is to “show off” one’s technical prowess by using industry jargon and lengthy descriptions of product features. This approach might work with a highly technical audience that has extra time to spend on the content. But that is not often the case. Here are two examples:

Appropriate for Experts: “The hypervisor must initiate a VM swap via a dynamic reallocation of IOPS.”

Appropriate for Non-Experts: “The virtual machine controller must move tasks between servers by adjusting how resources are allocated.”

Notice how the first example uses highly technical terms and acronyms. The second example still uses some basic technical terms, like “controller” and “tasks,” but it refrains from using the more specific component names and process terms.

Steps to Develop a Consistent Voice, Tone, and Style

So, how do we avoid these pitfalls? It all starts with a solid plan, collaboration, and the right tools. Let’s break it down into actionable steps.

1. Define Your Audience

Every great piece of writing starts with knowing your audience, and technical writing is no exception. Are you writing for engineers who need detailed specifications? Or is your audience made up of non-technical stakeholders who need high-level overviews?

Once you’ve defined your audience, tailor your voice, tone, and style accordingly:

  • Engineers and technical teams may require a more formal, detailed style with precise technical language.
  • Business leaders or clients might benefit from a professional but accessible style, with a lighter tone where appropriate.

Here are two examples:

For engineers: “Enter the IP address into the configuration field to initiate the connection sequence.”

For business leaders: “To get started, simply enter the IP address, and the system will connect automatically.”

Both examples have a consistent voice, but the style and tone are adapted to fit the audience.

2. Create a Voice, Tone, and Style Guide

A style guide ensures that everyone on your team is writing with the same voice, tone, and style. Your guide should cover:

  • Voice: Is your writing formal, professional, conversational, or technical?
  • Tone: Define how tone should shift based on the content type or purpose. For example, troubleshooting guides may need a neutral, helpful tone, while new feature announcements can be enthusiastic and motivating.
  • Style: Establish guidelines for sentence length, complexity, punctuation usage, and preferred vocabulary. Decide whether your team will use the active or passive voice, how you’ll handle abbreviations, and whether you’ll use British or American spelling conventions.

Example from a style guide: 

  • Voice: Professional but approachable. Always informative, never condescending. 
  • Tone for Troubleshooting: Direct, clear, and calm. Avoid humor or casual phrasing.
  • Style: Use short, clear sentences. Prefer active voice over passive. Technical terms should be defined in the first use.

For more about style guides and what they should contain, view Liz Fraley’s online talk “Using Style Guides to Achieve Content Collaboration and Consistency.”

 3. Use Consistent Terminology and Style Elements

Technical writing often involves specific terminology and stylistic conventions. Your style guide should include a glossary or terminology list that defines these terms and sets out expectations for their use. This approach is crucial for maintaining consistency across the organization’s content.

For example, let’s say you’re writing a user guide for a software tool. Decide early on whether you’ll refer to an action as “click,” “press,” or “select,” and stick with that term throughout the content. Similarly, define your stylistic preferences for punctuation, such as whether you’ll use the Oxford comma or not.

 4. Collaborate Early and Often

Don’t wait until the last minute to sync with your team on voice, tone, and style. Regularly review each other’s content components during the writing process to catch inconsistencies early. Establish a system where writers can easily share feedback and align on style. This collaboration is especially important if your team doesn’t include an editor.

5. Leverage Tools for Style and Consistency

Using a set of online tools can help ensure your team sticks to the voice, tone, and style guidelines:

  • Grammarly: Beyond grammar checks, this installable app offers style suggestions to enforce tone and terminology consistency. I use it for online work and inside my MS Word software.
  • Hemingway Editor: This online editor helps you not only correct grammar but also tighten wordy prose.
  • ProWritingAid: This AI-powered tool helps ensure clarity and stylistic consistency in long technical documents.
  • Google Docs or other Collaborative Spaces: Collaborative writing platforms can make it easy for teams to review, edit, and comment on documents in real time.

More sophisticated tools, like Acrolinx, can be specifically configured to check work against your organization’s style standards. But don’t forget about the old standard book-type style guides and usage lists, like the Chicago Manual of Style.

 6. Review and Revise

After your document is drafted, conduct a style review alongside your voice and tone review. During this stage, look specifically for stylistic inconsistencies. Are some sections more formal than others? Does the writing style shift dramatically from one chapter to another?

Have a dedicated reviewer (or team) whose focus is on ensuring that the document feels stylistically cohesive from start to finish.

A Brief Case Study: Bringing Consistency to Technical Procedures

I was once contracted to assist a quality engineering group in documenting internal technical procedures for a new Quality Management System (QMS). I quickly put together some templates. However, tasked with documenting over 100 procedures that required both high-level and detailed instructions, the four-person documentation team needed guidance on how to ensure the writing would be consistent within those templates.

The solution was to create a living style guide that described the formatting, style, and brand voice specifically for those templates. The guide included nine sections: template usage, style usage, word usage, branding, units of measure, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. We iterated the guide twice during the project. By the end, the QMS documentation not only looked but also read as though a single author had created it.

Achieving a consistent voice, tone, and style across technical content might seem like a daunting task, but with the right strategies and tools, it’s entirely possible. By defining your audience, creating clear style guidelines, and fostering collaboration, you can ensure that your technical documents remain cohesive, professional, and easy to understand. Not only will this improve the overall user experience, but it will also build trust in your brand, streamline your writing processes, and enhance the credibility of your content. Consistency doesn’t just make your writing better—it makes it more effective.

(Image by Enlightening Images for Pixabay.)

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