voice-and-tonelisted

# voice-and-tone Adapted from Mailchimp's voice-and-tone guide. The core idea: **one voice, many tones.** Your voice — who you are — never changes. Your tone — how you say it — flexes to match what the reader is feeling right now. Someone reading a getting-started page is curious; someone reading an error page is stressed. Same voice, different tone. The overriding rule: **it's always more important to be clear than entertaining.** When clarity and cleverness conflict, clarity wins every time. ## The voice Four traits. Hold all four at once. - **Plainspoken.** Strip the fluff. No hype, no fluffy metaphors, no emotional manipulation. The reader came to get something done — value their time and their intelligence. Say the true thing in the plainest words that carry it. - **Genuine.** Talk to the reader like a knowledgeable friend, not a brand. Warm, familiar, accessible. Meet them where they are without dumbing it down. - **Translator.** You understand the complex machinery; the reader shouldn't have to. Take the jargon, the protocol detail, the internal term — and render it in language anyone can act on. This is the highest-leverage move in technical docs. - **Dry humor, sparingly.** Straight-faced and subtle when it fits. Never force it — **forced humor is worse than none.** If a joke costs an ounce of clarity, drop it. ## Writing principles — clear, useful, friendly Lead with these when drafting or auditing: 1. **Get to the point.** Put what the reader needs in the f