Is your tone of voice refreshingly different or dull as ditchwater?

A practical guide with tone of voice examples, a simple framework, and a 10-minute audit to turn bland into brand.

Most brand copy is utterly interchangeable. Strip out the logo and you couldn’t tell one company from another. They all “leverage cutting-edge solutions to deliver transformative outcomes across the value chain.” They all promise innovation, excellence, and customer-centricity. And they all sound exactly the same.

The problem isn’t that companies lack personality—it’s that nobody’s shown them what different actually sounds like in practice. They’ve seen the adjective lists (“Be bold! Be warm! Be authentic!”) but no actual tone of voice examples that demonstrate how to turn those words into working copy.

This guide shows you what refreshingly different looks like in the wild. You’ll see real tone of voice examples that cut through the noise, a simple framework your team can use, and a 10-minute audit to help you ditch dull and start sounding distinct.

No fluff, no theory—just practical ways to make your copy sound like you.

Tone of voice, simply put

Your tone of voice is how your brand sounds when it talks. It’s the personality, rhythm, and choice of words that run through everything you write—from headlines to error messages to the footer on your invoices.

It’s different from brand voice, which is often just a list of adjectives nobody can use. And it’s not the same as fixing your corporate messaging problems—though dull tone often stems from the same place.

Tone is about behaviour. It’s the everyday choices writers make when they sit down to create something: which word to pick, how to structure a sentence, whether to use jargon or plain English.

Get those behaviours right and your brand tone of voice becomes recognisable, repeatable, and useful for the people who write your copy every day.

Tone of voice examples that cut through

A quick gallery to show what “refreshingly different” looks like in the wild. Each pair includes a before, an after, and why it works—so you can spot the pattern and reuse it across your own channels.

These tone of voice examples show how small shifts in language create big differences in clarity and impact. The changes aren’t dramatic, but they are deliberate. And they prove you don’t need to rewrite everything from scratch—just know what to look for and what to fix.

Headlines

Headlines do most of the first-impression work. They’re the shop window for your content. Make them specific, useful and human rather than abstract and corporate.

• Before: Solutions that optimise outcomes across your value chain.
• After: Do the important work. We’ll strip out the faff.
• Why it works: Jargon-free, verb-led, human cadence. It tells you what you get without hiding behind business-speak.

Microcopy and error messages

Calm, helpful tone reduces friction when things go wrong. When something fails, your microcopy should guide the user to a fix rather than blame them or hide behind technical language.

• Before: Form submission failed due to validation errors.
• After: That didn’t go through. Let’s fix the bits in red and try again.
• Why it works: Owns the problem; guides the next step. It treats the user like a collaborator, not an error message recipient.

CTAs

Make the action outcome-based. Tell people what they’ll get when they click, not just what button to press. Generic CTAs like “Learn more” waste prime real estate.

• Before: Learn more.
• After: Show me how this helps my team.
• Why it works: Specific, benefit-led. It answers the unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?”

Email openers

Start with what the reader gets. Skip the formality and corporate throat-clearing. Nobody needs “per our previous correspondence” when “here’s that thing” does the job.

• Before: Per our previous correspondence, please find attached…
• After: As promised, here’s the plan. It’s the fast way to get X done.
• Why it works: Conversational; value first. It respects the reader’s time and gets straight to the point.

Boilerplate lines

Replace puffery with concrete outcomes. Your boilerplate is often the dullest part of your copy because it’s written by committee and never refreshed. Say what you do in words real people use.

• Before: We leverage cutting-edge solutions to deliver innovation.
• After: We build useful things that make hard jobs easier.
• Why it works: Clear, specific, plausible. It doesn’t promise the moon—just tells you what the company genuinely does.

The five traits of a dull tone

Quick diagnostics to spot dullness at a glance. If your copy ticks more than two of these boxes, it’s time to sharpen up. These traits kill distinctiveness faster than anything else.

Vague — says something, means nothing. You’re using words like “solutions,” “innovative,” or “transformative” without any specifics. Fix: name the thing, add a detail. Say “project management software” instead of “solutions.” Say “cuts approval time by half” instead of “optimises workflows.”

Verbose — adds words, not clarity. You’re using twelve words where five would do. Sentences meander. Paragraphs repeat themselves. Fix: cut 20% on your first edit, prefer strong verbs over weak verbs plus adverbs. Replace “we are able to provide” with “we provide.”

Vanilla — sounds like everyone else. You could swap your logo for a competitor’s and nobody would notice. Fix:choose a stance; swap in concrete nouns. If everyone says “customer-centric,” find a different way to say you care about customers—or better yet, demonstrate it through your actions rather than claiming it.

Inward-looking — brand-first, reader-last. You lead with your company history, your values, your awards. The reader has to wade through three paragraphs before they find out what’s in it for them. Fix: lead with the job they’re trying to do. Start with their problem, not your solution.

Inconsistent — tone flips across channels. Your website sounds corporate, your emails sound friendly, your error messages sound like a robot wrote them. Fix: create shared behaviours and an examples library so everyone’s working from the same playbook.

A simple tone of voice framework your team can use

Tone of voice principles written as behaviours beat adjective soup every time. Tell your team what to do, not just what to be. Abstract words like “friendly” or “professional” mean different things to different writers. Behaviours give them something concrete to follow.

This tone of voice framework gives writers clear actions they can take right now, today, without waiting for approval or training. Each principle includes a “do” and a “don’t” so teams can see the contrast immediately.

Say what people mean

Swap jargon for the words your users say. If your customer wouldn’t use the phrase in conversation, neither should you. Listen to support calls, read customer emails, sit in on sales demos—then use that language.

• Do: Use the names your customers use. If they call it a “dashboard,” don’t rebrand it as a “command centre.”
• Don’t: “Leverage value maximisation paradigms to optimise stakeholder alignment.”

Lead with the job

Start with what the reader needs to do next. Don’t bury the ask in backstory, corporate history, or preamble. Respect their time by getting to the point.

• Do: Tell me what button to press, what happens when I press it, and why I’d want to.
• Don’t: Bury the ask three paragraphs deep after explaining your company’s founding story.

Write like you talk at work

Human, not sloppy. Aim for the clarity and directness of a good work conversation, not the formality of a legal contract or the sloppiness of a text message. You can be professional without being stuffy.

• Do: Use short, clear sentences. One idea per sentence. Contractions are fine. Active voice wherever possible.
• Don’t: Fall into email-ese (“as per,” “please be advised”) or needless legalese when plain English works.

Keep the promise

Tone must match the value you claim. If you promise reliability, write plainly and confidently—no hype, no overselling. If you promise care and support, drop the corporate distance and sound like you care.

• Do: Plain, confident language if you’re positioning around reliability and trust.
• Don’t: Breathless hype and exclamation marks if your brand promise is about care, accuracy, or safety.

This isn’t about having one tone for everything. It’s about making sure your tone reinforces what you’re promising rather than contradicting it.

The coffee test — a 10-minute audit

A quick, repeatable way to spot issues and improve today. You can run this tone of voice audit in the time it takes to finish your morning coffee. It’s designed to be practical, not perfect—the goal is progress, not paralysis.

Here’s how it works:

1. Pick one page, one email, one form flow. Don’t try to audit everything at once. Start small.
2. Highlight jargon, vagueness, passive voice. Use three different highlighter colours if you’re working on paper, or comment types if you’re in a doc. Just make the problems visible.
3. Rewrite two lines using the principles. Pick the worst offenders and fix them using the four behaviours above. Show your working.
4. Read aloud to a colleague. Can they hear the brand? Does it sound like you, or like everyone else? If they can’t tell it’s you without seeing the logo, you’ve got work to do.
5. Save before/after in the examples library. This is the most important step. Every fix you make becomes a teaching tool for the next writer.

Mini scorecard (0–2 each; /10 total):

• Clear verbs: Are you using strong, active verbs or hiding behind passive voice?
• Specific claims: Are you naming real things or hiding behind vague abstractions?
• Reader-first: Does the copy start with their job or your company?
• Consistent tone: Does this sound like the rest of your brand or like a different company?
• Next step obvious: Can the reader tell what to do next, or are they guessing?

If you score below 6, your tone needs work. If you’re at 8 or above, you’re on the right track—now roll it out across channels and make it repeatable.

Governance, not gospel

Make good behaviour easy to repeat. The best tone of voice guidelines aren’t rule books that sit in a drawer—they’re practical tools that help teams write better, faster, without constant approval loops.

Build a central examples library with short guidelines and pattern snippets. Show, don’t just tell. Real before-and-after examples are worth more than a thousand words of abstract principle. Writers need to see what good looks like in context—subject lines, error messages, onboarding copy, confirmation emails.

Assign an owner who keeps the library current. Tone evolves as your brand evolves, and someone needs to be responsible for spotting drift and updating the examples. Set a QA cadence—monthly sweeps work well for most teams—and run micro-training sessions when you spot patterns slipping.

Tie tone to your design system. Show where tone lives in templates, components, and user flows. When tone is baked into the tools people use every day, it becomes the path of least resistance. Look at how organisations like the NHS approach voice and tone—clear behaviours, real examples, easy to reuse without reinventing the wheel every time.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s making the right choice easier than the wrong choice, so quality becomes the default rather than the exception.

Where to go next

If you want to define tone of voice properly and build a system that sticks, start with our verbal identity services. We help teams ditch dull and sound distinct across every channel—from your website to your product interface to your investor decks.

A strong tone of voice doesn’t live in isolation. It sits inside a broader verbal identity system that includes your message hierarchy, your brand story, and the language patterns that make you recognisable. Get those foundations right, and tone becomes much easier to implement and maintain.

For more inspiration on building usable style systems, check out Mailchimp’s voice and tone guide—it’s one of the best behaviour-based examples out there. They show, rather than tell, and give writers real patterns to copy.

If you’ve worked through the coffee test and want to go deeper, these tone of voice examples and this framework give you everything you need to make a start. The work isn’t complicated—it just needs doing.

Need a sharper verbal identity? Talk to Fabrik.

FAQs

Quick answers to common stakeholder questions about tone of voice. These come up in almost every workshop, so here’s the short version.

What are good tone of voice examples?

Good examples show before and after, explain why the change works, and focus on everyday situations—headlines, CTAs, error messages, email openers. They’re specific rather than abstract. Look for specificity, clarity, and a human voice that matches the brand promise.

The best examples are from your own channels, not generic templates.

How do we write tone of voice guidelines people actually use?

Write them as behaviours, not adjectives. Instead of “Be bold,” say “Lead with the job. Start with what the reader needs to do next.” Include real examples from your channels and make them searchable and easy to copy. Keep guidelines short—one page of behaviours beats fifty pages of theory.

Make them visual where possible, and tie them to your design system so they’re hard to ignore.

Is tone of voice the same as brand voice?

No. Brand voice is often a list of abstract traits that don’t help writers make practical decisions. Tone of voice is the practical system that tells writers how to sound like the brand in real situations—from error messages to investor decks. Tone is behaviour; voice is aspiration. You need both, but tone is where the actual work gets done.

How do we measure if our tone is working?

Run the coffee test regularly across different channels. Track consistency—can a colleague identify your brand from copy alone, without seeing the logo? Do customers describe your communications the way you describe your brand values?

Qualitative feedback beats vanity metrics here. Look for signs of recognition, not just engagement numbers. If your support team says “this sounds like us,” you’re winning.

Can we have different tones for different audiences?

Yes, but keep the core behaviours consistent. Your tone might flex slightly—more technical for expert users, more supportive for new users, more formal for regulatory content—but the underlying principles and personality should stay recognisable across contexts.

Think of it as the same person adjusting their register for different situations, not becoming a different person entirely. Flex, don’t flip.