Girlguiding

While at first glance the principles are a bit meh, the tone of voice guidelines themselves more than make up for it and are great for some inspiration.

What’s good about the guidelines:

• So in-depth. Each principle is broken down into a few specifics, then explained in detail.

• They’re packed full of examples which all look like real comms (this is great to help writers understand what good looks like).

• They include research and stats to back up their voice — for example, Girlguiding ran a tone of voice test in 2021 where they found people preferred shorter sentences. There are tons of other helpful tidbits in there too which could help inform your own tone of voice guidelines.

• There are quick tips scattered throughout the doc, giving a little extra help.

• They split out “tone” and “style”. Lots of companies get these mixed up but it’s much easier to keep them separate. Tone of voice is all about how to write to sound like the brand, whereas style is about the details, like how to format dates or percentages.

• There’s a lovely section dedicated to inclusive language.