# Tone of voice — [YOUR COMPANY NAME]

This is the file that stops everything sounding like it came out of a machine.
Be specific. "Friendly and professional" tells Claude nothing, every company on
earth says that.

---

## How we sound, in one line

[Example: "Straight talking, no waffle, like a good tradesman explaining
something on your doorstep."]

## Who is talking

[Is it "I" or "we"? Is there a named person behind the brand or is it the
company voice? Get this right and half the job is done.]

- We write as: [ ]
- The person behind the brand: [ ]

## Rules we do not break

Fill these in, delete what does not apply, add your own.

- Language: UK English. Optimise, colour, specialise, enquiry, organise.
- Emojis: [yes / no / sparingly]
- Exclamation marks: [ ]
- Em dashes (the long ones): [we use them / we never use them]
- Sentence length: [short and punchy / longer and considered]
- Do we swear: [never / mild, with people we know / matched to the customer]

## Words and phrases we actually use

[Ten to twenty. Pull them from your own emails and texts, not from thin air.
Search your sent folder for the phrases that keep coming up.]

- [ ]
- [ ]
- [ ]

## Words we ban

[The corporate stuff that makes you cringe. Be ruthless.]

- leverage
- utilise
- solutions
- elevate
- reach out
- touching base
- circling back
- [add your own]

## How we open a message

[Two or three real examples of how you actually start an email or a text.]

- [ ]
- [ ]

## How we close

- [ ]
- [ ]

## Three real examples

Paste in three things you have actually written and sent. A quote email, a
chase, a piece of bad news. This is worth more than every rule above it,
because Claude can copy a pattern better than it can follow a description.

### Example 1 — [what it was]

```
[paste it]
```

### Example 2 — [what it was]

```
[paste it]
```

### Example 3 — [what it was]

```
[paste it]
```

## Three examples of what we would never send

[Same again, but wrong. Write or find something that is technically fine but
does not sound like you, and say why.]

### Not us, because [reason]

```
[paste it]
```