Write how I speak?
Open any brand voice guidelines and you’ll see something in the region of “Write like you speak.” Which is, of course, advice fraught with peril. My idiolect involves swearing a lot, saying ‘like’ heaps, and saying ‘heaps’ heaps (in fairness, heaps of ‘heaps’ is idiomatic Aussie; some might argue the swearing is too).
So you get why it’s heaps perilous: before long, someone’s using ‘dickhead’ in a headline about a new way to pay. Their defence? “That’s how I speak!” Better guidelines will be quick to clarify the matter*: it’s fine and good to use natural, conversational language. By all means, start sentences with conjunctions. Throw some contractions around. Try relaxed phrasing over formal. But, they remind us: we’d never encourage you, writing as the brand, to speak like you, the writer. That’d be reckless.
[*You may also see a second line of defence that cautions against slang, niche references, and an overfamiliar tone aka my three favourite things.]
Lead with your ear
Brand voice is part of the strategic humanisation of a business. While my background isn’t in branding (I find most writers stumble into the industry?), I do alright when it comes to brand voice stuff. Let’s chalk it up to years of listening closely.
Listening is integral to performing corporate ventriloquism. Listening to your clients? Sure. But more to people expressing themselves in everyday situations. How are you supposed to construct voices if you aren’t attuned to them? How can you write like people speak if you don’t know how they speak?
I have a journalism degree (seemed like a good idea at the time). That degree led me into magazines. I used to interview people every day, so every day was a tour of the different ways people talk: diction, cadence, pitch, syntax, etc. Some joked. Some asked questions back. Some spoke in headlines. Some preferred monosyllables. All of it was invaluable inventory. I don’t mean this in a “back in my day” way but, tedious as it was, because I had to transcribe the interviews as well, that helped me get an even better feel for the interviewees’ respective verbal stylings (plus it gave me the fun opportunity to prosecute my own voice—on a sonic and an expressive level—day in, day out).
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to interview people for a living to reap the rewards—you need only be around the spoken word. It’s easy: wherever you go, there’s probably someone saying something. Am I encouraging eavesdropping? Definitely. It’s free entertainment that’s relevant to your job. Or, if sitting around cafes prying into private convos doesn’t appeal, you could use your own daily interactions.
Listen hard enough and you get an ear for voices. Then you can be a conduit for them.
Speaking in tongues
So how does my mental warehouse of voices make its way onto the page?
During my time interviewing people, I responded strongest to playful, digressive, self-reflexive voices (musicians often had them). You know when someone tells a straight enough story but they fill it with florid footnotes? Those were—and still are—the chats I enjoyed most. And I’ve made an effort to infuse my own writing—be it articles for The Subtext, emails for fashion brands, or my own socials—with that postmodern flavour profile. Perhaps you can tell.
Your vocabulary will come in handy. Your voice palette, which you can build by collecting voices in the wild, is arguably of equal importance—not just in a verbal identity context, but in a general writing sense. It gives you a stockpile of speech to work with, meaning more breadth and versatility, meaning it’s easier to shift tones and address diverse audiences.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” That’s attributed to Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher. Over the years, generations of Steiners have passed down their own versions of the wisdom—usually along the lines of “Shut up and listen”. I’d personally go with “Less yapping, more listening”. But that’s just how I talk.
Dan Steiner is an eight-year-old troublemaker who, after mistakenly being left home alone on Christmas Eve, must defend his home against a pair of burglars. Sorry, no. I accidentally sent you the synopsis for Home Alone. I'm actually a Contributing Writer for The Subtext. And I can be connected with via LinkedIn
Write how I speak?
Open any brand voice guidelines and you’ll see something in the region of “Write like you speak.” Which is, of course, advice fraught with peril. My idiolect involves swearing a lot, saying ‘like’ heaps, and saying ‘heaps’ heaps (in fairness, heaps of ‘heaps’ is idiomatic Aussie; some might argue the swearing is too).
So you get why it’s heaps perilous: before long, someone’s using ‘dickhead’ in a headline about a new way to pay. Their defence? “That’s how I speak!” Better guidelines will be quick to clarify the matter*: it’s fine and good to use natural, conversational language. By all means, start sentences with conjunctions. Throw some contractions around. Try relaxed phrasing over formal. But, they remind us: we’d never encourage you, writing as the brand, to speak like you, the writer. That’d be reckless.
[*You may also see a second line of defence that cautions against slang, niche references, and an overfamiliar tone aka my three favourite things.]
Lead with your ear
Brand voice is part of the strategic humanisation of a business. While my background isn’t in branding (I find most writers stumble into the industry?), I do alright when it comes to brand voice stuff. Let’s chalk it up to years of listening closely.
Listening is integral to performing corporate ventriloquism. Listening to your clients? Sure. But more to people expressing themselves in everyday situations. How are you supposed to construct voices if you aren’t attuned to them? How can you write like people speak if you don’t know how they speak?
I have a journalism degree (seemed like a good idea at the time). That degree led me into magazines. I used to interview people every day, so every day was a tour of the different ways people talk: diction, cadence, pitch, syntax, etc. Some joked. Some asked questions back. Some spoke in headlines. Some preferred monosyllables. All of it was invaluable inventory. I don’t mean this in a “back in my day” way but, tedious as it was, because I had to transcribe the interviews as well, that helped me get an even better feel for the interviewees’ respective verbal stylings (plus it gave me the fun opportunity to prosecute my own voice—on a sonic and an expressive level—day in, day out).
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to interview people for a living to reap the rewards—you need only be around the spoken word. It’s easy: wherever you go, there’s probably someone saying something. Am I encouraging eavesdropping? Definitely. It’s free entertainment that’s relevant to your job. Or, if sitting around cafes prying into private convos doesn’t appeal, you could use your own daily interactions.
Listen hard enough and you get an ear for voices. Then you can be a conduit for them.
Speaking in tongues
So how does my mental warehouse of voices make its way onto the page?
During my time interviewing people, I responded strongest to playful, digressive, self-reflexive voices (musicians often had them). You know when someone tells a straight enough story but they fill it with florid footnotes? Those were—and still are—the chats I enjoyed most. And I’ve made an effort to infuse my own writing—be it articles for The Subtext, emails for fashion brands, or my own socials—with that postmodern flavour profile. Perhaps you can tell.
Your vocabulary will come in handy. Your voice palette, which you can build by collecting voices in the wild, is arguably of equal importance—not just in a verbal identity context, but in a general writing sense. It gives you a stockpile of speech to work with, meaning more breadth and versatility, meaning it’s easier to shift tones and address diverse audiences.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” That’s attributed to Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher. Over the years, generations of Steiners have passed down their own versions of the wisdom—usually along the lines of “Shut up and listen”. I’d personally go with “Less yapping, more listening”. But that’s just how I talk.
Dan Steiner is an eight-year-old troublemaker who, after mistakenly being left home alone on Christmas Eve, must defend his home against a pair of burglars. Sorry, no. I accidentally sent you the synopsis for Home Alone. I'm actually a Contributing Writer for The Subtext. And I can be connected with via LinkedIn
Further Reading
