If only the copywriting were as tasty as the couscous.

Tarted up

Here’s the description from the packaging of Waitrose’s Duchy Originals lemon tart:

A vibrant pairing of zingy Sicilian lemon juice and cream come together in a beautifully balanced tart.

We have the Romans to thank for bringing lemons to Europe and the West Country for its dreamy, rich cream and milk.

Technical points first. In the first sentence, ‘pairing’ is the subject, and it’s singular, so it should be ‘comes together’, although I’m not sure whether a pairing really can come together. It’s already together. Without the ‘vibrant pairing’ part, the lemon juice and the cream could have come together, but no. (This isn’t a difficult error to pick up – Microsoft Word will highlight it as such as you type.)

Now usage. Can a pairing of lemon juice and cream really be ‘vibrant’? Not literally, but we do speak of vibrant colours, so maybe this is OK. For me, though, it feels like the language of lounge-decorating making an unwelcome foray into the kitchen.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether a tart can be ‘beautifully balanced’ – it makes me think of a strumpet on a tightrope. I’ve certainly got a problem with ‘dreamy’ being applied to dairy products – what exactly is dreamy cream, anyway? (On second thoughts, don’t answer that.)

In my opinion, saying ‘we have the Romans to thank’ implies blame rather than gratitude. For example, I would say we had the Romans ‘to thank’ for introducing that pernicious weed, ground elder, to the UK. Apparently they used to eat it. Perhaps with lemon juice?

Finally, it is true that the Romans brought lemons to Europe. In fact, the Wikipedia page on lemons says so, above the fold. Good old Wikipedia – patron saint of uninspired copywriters everywhere.

Milking it

Now check out the copy from the organic milk in the same line:

Our organic milk is produced from cows which graze clover rich pastures in Devon, Dorset and Somerset

The sub-clause describes the subject rather than defining it, so ‘which’ should be ‘that’. Read this post if you’re unclear on the distinction between that and which. (Again, Word will pick up this one for you.)

In my book, ‘clover rich’ needs a hyphen. Increasingly, people like to omit the hyphen in this sort of situation, but I really don’t know why. You should always use a hyphen if one is necessary to clarify the sense, which it clearly is here. When you reach ‘clover’, you think the cows graze on it, but it’s actually part of an adjectival compound describing ‘pasture’, which is what the cows actually graze. Why trip the reader up?

Finally, I would prefer ‘comes from’ or ‘is made by’ to ‘is produced from’, especially in a context where we’re trying to establish a sense of nostalgic rural authenticity over industrial mass production. And the simpler, shorter or Anglo-Saxon word should always be preferred, ceteris paribus – er, all else being the same, I mean.

I have no illusions about my place in the copywriting food chain. I know I’ll never be asked to write product copy for Waitrose, toiling away up here in the provinces. But at least my workaday, mediocre copy is free from elementary errors and sloppy word choice. I feel it’s the least I can do.

ABC Copywriting delivers professional, premium-quality business writing services to corporations and organisations throughout the UK. We’re a cheerful lot and we’re always chuffed to chinwag, so if you want to chat about your project, grab the rap-rod and give us a tinkle. With ten years’ experience of developing content for clients of all types, we are ideally placed to meet your copywriting needs. Our copy’s too bootylicious for ya baby!

The problem here is not quality, but consistency. While any of the ideas here might work in isolation, they are too different in terms of their ‘personality’ to gel. In other words, this text has no single, recognisable tone of voice – and this makes the communication almost totally ineffective.

What is written tone of voice?

Written tone of voice is simply the ‘personality’ of your brand or company as expressed through the written word. Tone of voice governs what you say in writing, and how you say it – the content and style of textual communications, in any setting and in any medium.

Why bother about written tone of voice?

Managing written tone of voice is a key part of achieving a unified character across all your communications, internal and external. Just as it’s desirable to have a consistent look and feel in design terms across stationery, signage, advertising and online marketing, so it’s also worthwhile ensuring that the content of all these media feels like it’s coming from a single source.

If you want your communications to be in harmony, you've got to keep control of the tone

Giving a brand or company a proper ‘voice’ gives an impression of solidity, trustworthiness and honesty; in NLP terms, it makes communication congruent. Conversely, inconsistent tone of voice (or graphic style) gives a dissonant, self-contradictory impression that readers will find discomfiting, even if only on an unconscious level. As in normal life, we find it reassuring when people stay more or less the same over time – if their style of communication changes radically from one day to the next, we might trust them less, or even become concerned for their mental health.

Brand vs company tone of voice

I’m saying ‘brand or company’ as though written tone of voice were the same for both. There are a few important distinctions.

• A company might have several brands, each with its own tone of voice.
• Brand tones of voice might be completely different from other brands belonging to the same company, or from the company’s corporate tone (consider the contrast between a Walt Disney microsite and its corporate content).
• The audiences for brand and corporate content might be utterly different, with no overlap whatsoever – or they might be aimed at the same audience at different times, or in different situations.
• An individual brand’s tone of voice is likely to evolve much more quickly than a corporate tone, perhaps to stay in line with changing customer expectations, while corporate tone of voice is more monolithic, expressing the unchanging values or corporate culture of the organisation.

Defining tone of voice

The easiest way to consider tone of voice is in terms of the personality of your brand or company. If it was a person, what would they be like?

To keep things simple, three values is probably enough. More than that risks duplicating values, or obsessing over minor details. Three broad-brush statements of personality should be plenty to pin down the essence of a brand. Here are some examples:

If you want to liven things up a bit, you could try asking what type of car your brand would be, or what type of biscuit, or whatever. But beware of being led astray by your chosen metaphor. Inanimate objects only have the personality we project on them; this type of thinking can take you into a hall of mirrors where you’re just playing with ideas, not talking in terms of business reality. Human values are the key to strong marketing.

The problem with B2B

The last example in the table above illustrates the problem for many B2B companies: finding values that are genuinely unique. While knowledge is a key attribute of a good IT support provider, in another way it’s just the least one would expect. What differentiates one provider from another is the depth and nature of the knowledge and its application. But that kind of nitty-gritty detail doesn’t translate very well to broad-brush statements – it’s the same problem I documented in my article on writing a company tagline. The values listed above could just as easily apply to any other IT support provider – or indeed, any professional support firm of any type whatsoever. And this results in broadly similar tones of voice across the B2B sector.

To wriggle out of this straitjacket, some B2B firms pretend to have values that they actually don’t. This leads to self-consciously friendly or funky text, probably embellished with bright orange graphics and rounded corners. Personally, I think this is a mistake, as I blogged in my piece entitled Let’s be honest. Believable brand values and tone of voice can’t be a work of fiction. Your tone of voice should be consistent with reality, as well as with itself. It’s far easier to stick to a tone of voice if it’s in harmony with they way you habitually write or speak. So if your IT support company is bluff, masculine and ‘all business’, make that your tone. Some people will want a partner like that, so focus on converting your most promising prospects. If you put on a mask, people will see through it soon enough anyway.

From values to style

Armed with your three values, you can consider how they translate into the nuts and bolts of hands-on writing: register, vocabulary and grammar.

Defining the register of your writing is often a case of choosing a point on a continuum. For example, you might need to decide where your tone of voice sits between these extremes:

Vocabulary is simply the choice of words, and you might want to stipulate what type of words can and can’t be used within your tone of voice. However, we’re now moving into a complex, highly subjective realm where the definitions of terms can be slippery. Let’s say, for example, that your law firm is only going to use ‘formal’ language, or that your cellar bar is going to use ‘funky’ wording. Are you sure that everyone will understand what those words actually mean? Is your idea of ‘funky’ the same as theirs? Examples are one way to get over this problem, but it could still be an issue.

Copywriters are often told to make their writing more simple or accessible (I am, anyway), but there’s always a price to pay. Long words may sound stuffy, but they are very precise. For example, there are no genuine one-syllable synonyms for words such as ‘altruistic’ or ‘intuitive’. If you want to get rid of them, you’ll have to rephrase at length or lose some meaning. Conversely, if you use the most precise language you possibly can, some sense of friendliness or ‘looseness’ will be lost. It’s a trade-off either way.

In terms of grammar, you might want to consider whether to use contractions (‘we’re’, ‘it’s’ and so on), avoid long sentences or allow some rules to be broken (such as sentences beginning with ‘and’). Here, it’s just a question of how far you want to go, and what is useful to the people doing the actual writing. (There’s no point talking about gerunds or dependent clauses if people don’t know what they are.) Here’s a post I wrote about grammar rules it’s OK to break. 

You might also want your writing to be original or arresting. While that seems a laudable aim at first sight, it won’t necessarily guarantee that your communications succeed. Originality isn’t necessarily effective. Readers over 50, for example, may be accustomed to finding certain content in a certain format or style; deviating from that norm probably won’t bring you any benefit. Instead, your aim should be to express yourself as well as possible within the communication conventions of your sector, like a film director working within a genre. For more on this, see my piece If clichés work, use them.

Variation in tone of voice

Written tone of voice is rarely the same in every situation. Just as people might speak differently to their colleagues than they do to their children, so brands need to have different verbal registers. Some of the dimensions of variation are:

• Mood. Although the underlying ‘character’ of the brand might change, it can still have different moods. For example, a series of letters designed to guide the customer of a double-glazing firm from initial introduction through to purchasing might make the transition from a bright, breezy tone through to a more serious, studious and detail-oriented feel as the relationship develops.
• Medium. Different media require different ways of speaking. The most obvious example at the moment is social media, which is generally agreed to require a different tone from other online channels or offline marketing. For more on this, see my guide to online tone of voice for business.
• Audience. Your brand might need to talk to different people. For example, a website selling children’s shoes might include content aimed at the children themselves, and other content aimed at their parents. If the users and purchasers of a product aren’t the same person, you might have to consider how you’ll talk to each group.

Keep it simple

Personally, I don’t think there’s any need to overbrain written tone of voice. Content consultants who want to play the fairy godmother might tell you that you need a huge manual on how to write in every situation – rather like the expensive ‘brand guideline’ documents that design agencies love to create. Unfortunately, tone of voice guidelines will not compensate for lack of writing ability or common sense, just as brand design guidelines do not turn the average Microsoft Word user into Peter Saville. People with a tin ear for language will not be saved by rules and regulations, because writing is an art as much as a science.

As the saying says, rules are for the observance of the foolish and the instruction of the wise. Those who ‘get it’ don’t need loads of detail, while those who don’t will be left none the wiser by it anyway. A one-page summary of your brand values, along with an explanation of how they translate into writing style, will be a huge step forward if you’ve never considered tone of voice before.

Oh, and one final thought: if you decide that you simply must publish a humungous style guide, do make sure it’s not embarrassingly full of mistakes…

I’m sure many a client has heaved a sigh over their copywriter’s tiresome insistence that a comma must be inserted at some particular point. When I used to check the printer’s proofs at a publishing house, the production manager would be incredulous at the idea of incurring big cost for such a footling change. (The cost was for running out patches and ‘cutting in’ or even ‘doubling in’ on the imposed film before remaking the ozalid – ask your parents, kids.)

Yet there are times when this tiny punctuation mark can make a huge difference to the meaning of a sentence. And it may be that the sentence is quite an important one. Consider this text, which appears on a packet of salted peanuts from a leading UK supermarket chain:

Do not give this product to small children who can choke on nuts

The literal meaning here is ‘if there are any small children around who can choke on nuts, don’t give them this product’, with the implied meaning ‘if there are any small children who can’t choke on nuts, it’s OK for them’.

Now consider how the phrase should have read (with comma inserted):

Do not give this product to small children, who can choke on nuts

Here, the meaning is very different: ‘Small children can choke on nuts. Don’t give them this product.’

The problem stems from the use of ‘who’ in both restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. If we were talking about something inanimate, rather than children, we would have to change the wording as well as insert the comma. For example, note the difference in meaning between these two phrases:

He stopped the first car that was driven by a woman.
He stopped the first car, which was driven by a woman.

Loyal readers may recognise this as the sentence I used to explain the difference between that and which many moons ago.

As I hope I’ve made clear, these grammar points aren’t dead customs or academic debating points. They really do affect meaning, and if you’re giving health advice, that meaning is important. That’s why copywriters go nuts over ’em.

Split infinitives

‘To boldly go where no man has gone before.’ Strictly speaking, it should have been ‘to go boldly’, or ‘boldly to go’. But, as Gene Roddenberry well knew, either of those would have sounded ludicrous. If you want to really make an impact, there are times when it’s practically essential to boldly split infinitives no one has split before.

Prepositions (ending sentences with)

Without rules, our society would surely descend into chaos

‘Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.’ To comply with itself, this gem should read ‘with which to end a sentence’. But if you always did that, your copywriting would end up sounding like Brideshead Revisited.

Prepositions and conjunctions (beginning sentences with)

You shouldn’t really begin sentences with prepositions (‘with’, ‘of’, ‘for’ etc) or with conjunctions (‘but’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘so’, etc). But there are times when it’s essential. And desirable, to add punch and rhythm to your copywriting. So relax about this one too. 

Sentence without verbs

A sentence should always have a ‘doing’ word, or verb. But there are many sharp, conversational utterances that lack them, and if you want that tone in your copywriting, you’ll need to emulate them. Like this.

Missing out ‘that’

‘Everybody knows you can’t just miss out words’. No, everybody knows that you can’t just miss out words. But you can, as long as the meaning remains crystal clear to the reader. And shorter is nearly always better.

And here’s a few you can’t break: that and which, possessive apostrophes, decades (‘80s’, not ‘80’s’), its/it’s and their/there/they’re. If you don’t know what I’m on about, get yourself a copywriter!