This list of 37 website-specific tone words can be used in two different phases of the content development process:
- Planning: before the content has been written
- Evaluation: to understand how your users interpret the tone of your content
Planning
1. Pick Your Tone Profile
Start first by deciding at a high level what kind of tone will work best for your site as a whole or for the piece of content you’re preparing to write. Assess where you aim to be within the four dimensions of tone of voice:
- Funny vs. serious
- Formal vs. casual
- Respectful vs. irreverent
- Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact
2. Choose Your Tone Words
Once you’ve defined your target tone profile, refine your tone strategy by selecting from the list of tone words at the end of this article.. Create a do list with the words that you want your tone to fit, and also a don’t list with the words that your tone should not match.
For example, let’s say we’re preparing to write copy for a hospital’s Patients & Visitors site section. We might decide on the following tone profile.
- Serious: we shouldn’t try to be funny while speaking to patients
- Formal: the hospital has a traditional and prestigious brand personality
- Respectful: it should not look like we’re making light of a serious situation for patients
- Neither enthusiastic nor matter-of-fact: we should convey some sense of empathy, but should not appear overly emotional
We might then select several target tone words, for example:
- Sympathetic but not cheerful
- Professional but also caring
Remember that you can always add your own tone words if our list doesn’t have any that fit your intentions. Just remember that tone words should describe how your organization feels about the topic.
Evaluation
- Collect several samples of your content. Ideally, these should represent the range of content types in your product. (For example, homepage, listing page, service description, customer support, etc.)
- Select tone words that you feel describe the tone of voice for each content sample. You can do it yourself or ask a few colleagues to go through this exercise.
- Give the samples to actual users, and ask them to decide which tone words best describe each of your content pieces -- this method is a modified product-reaction test.
Don't skip step 3! Remember that you are not your users: your interpretation of tone will almost certainly be different from your users’ interpretation.
Your primary goal is to consider if the tone actually conveyed by your content matches your brand personality and the tone you want to convey. If it doesn’t, modify the content to move it closer to your goal, and test again.
List of Tone Words
- Authoritative
- Caring
- Cheerful
- Coarse
- Conservative
- Conversational
- Casual
- Dry
- Edgy
- Enthusiastic
- Formal
- Frank
- Friendly
- Fun
- Funny
- Humorous
- Informative
- Irreverent
- Matter-of-fact
- Nostalgic
- Passionate
- Playful
- Professional
- Provocative
- Quirky
- Respectful
- Romantic
- Sarcastic
- Serious
- Smart
- Snarky
- Sympathetic
- Trendy
- Trustworthy
- Unapologetic
- Upbeat
- Witty