Tone of Voice and an Unhappy Client
While learning about different tones of voice in my Style course, I had a situation at work that demonstrated the importance of tone. I’m a lead for a team of custom resume writers. One of the writers on my team had a client who wasn’t happy with her resume, and the writer couldn’t figure out why. She sent me the notes from her consultation call and asked me to intervene.
The resume was good and reflected the notes from the call. But upon further review of the resume and the email conversation between the writer and the client, I was able to identify two issues. The first is that the resume included two spelling errors. These were of course accidental, but a big turnoff to the client. The other issue was tone of voice. The client is a seasoned professional of 30+ years and expected a more formal tone. The writer had written in a more casual, conversational tone, which is perfect for many settings, but not what the client expected in her resume. I fixed the errors and adjusted the tone, and the client was happy.
I communicated my findings with the writer and she asked me for some instruction or training in tone of voice. I was able to point out specific semantic choices as well as some syntactic constructions that made my revision more formal. Before taking the Style course, I thought writing in different tones of voice was purely instinctual. And it is instinctual, meaning someone can write in a certain tone without knowing what linguistic choices give the text that tone. But it was helpful for me to learn about specific variations that change tone.
Code Switching on the Daily
I write for my work and for my classes, and depending on what I’m writing, I frequently need to change my tone of voice.
I’m a big fan of the plain language movement. I’m a native English speaker with a Master’s degree, but I still experience anxiety and confusion when faced with documents like tax forms and real estate closing documents. I can’t imagine the frustration of people who aren’t as familiar with the language. But I learned that writing in plain language is harder than it seems.
For a class assignment, I had to revise one page of instructions from a publishing platform’s website into plain language. I thought I could go through line by line and simplify the vocabulary, cut out extra words, and so on. But I discovered that the page needed a complete rewrite. First, I had to understand what the instructions actually meant, which took some time. Then I re-wrote the instructions in the way that made sense to me as someone unfamiliar with the platform. Instructed by Leslie O’Flahavan, my goal was to get to the point, write so readers would know what to do, and anticipate their questions. I couldn’t do this by simply re-wording the existing text. I checked my revision against the requirements of plain language (active language, no jargon, no fluff, address the reader, avoid elegant variation, and so on). Then I did some informal testing by asking a member of my household to read my revision for understanding. This was instructive, as I could observe points of confusion where additional revision was needed.
At the same time I was learning to write in plain language, I still had to write resumes for clients who most definitely did not expect their resumes to be in plain language. As I mentioned in the situation with the unhappy client, resumes have a distinct tone that is much more formal, full of jargon, elegant variation, and sometimes more fluff than I’d prefer.
Even though plain language is not the target for resume writing, there are aspects of plain language that I can apply to my resume writing toolkit. While a resume is typically more formal, it may be read by someone who is unfamiliar with the field of the applicant. So it’s still a good idea to avoid too much jargon, to write out acronyms on first use, and to write in the active voice. And it’s always good to avoid noun strings and smothered verbs. Ultimately, with a resume, as with plain language, the outcome is for the reader to be interested in the content, to understand it, and be able to use it.
Brand Voice and Emotional Connection
In learning about tone of voice, I was fascinated by this statement from Mailchimp’s Courier:
“The words you use shape how your customers see you and can help you build an emotional connection with them. And, that emotional connection is what will help drive that first sale and then an ongoing relationship after that – in fact, a study published by Harvard Business Review found that emotional engagement can matter more than customer satisfaction when driving brand loyalty.”
Perhaps this is why I’m a devoted Target shopper but avoid Walmart at all costs. Sure, the customer satisfaction at Target is far superior. But I have an emotional connection because of Target’s branding and company personality. I love their app, their website, and using their registry to send gifts. Apparently, Target has gotten in my head and knows how I speak.
Circling back to Resumes and Tone
This brings me back to the issue of tone in resume writing. I’ve realized this week that I model a person’s resume after their own tone of voice. This is one reason I request an old resume and also do a consultation call—I need to discover how they speak. The resumes I create should be in the client’s voice. Of course, the tone of a resume is a more formal version of that person’s voice in a different setting, but the tones of resumes I write vary depending on the client. The client in my story expected a very formal tone because that was the way she spoke. I need to be aware of each client’s voice and create content that mirrors that voice appropriately.
Style/Voice/Tone and Other Personal Connections
Since 2020 I’ve been helping my mom write her personal history. It began as a Covid project and has morphed into a massive undertaking with 300+ pages and at least that many photos. She wrote all of the content, but I’ve helped with editing and then formatting (my courses in editing and designing technical documents have been so helpful for this project). Throughout the process, voice has been important to me. I want the voice to be hers, not mine. So I only make changes in orthography and semantics that are needed for comprehension. Her syntax isn’t the same as mine, but I refrain from making too many changes because it reads the way she speaks. I know her posterity will appreciate the voice and tone and being able to hear her through the text. My mom and I have had to create some guidelines, however. In a book of this length, written over months and years, it’s understandable that there would be variation in how she handles things like dates and abbreviations. So I’m creating a style guide as I edit in an effort to add consistency.
The last thing I want to mention is my fascination with how often the reading materials for my Style course reinforce what I’m learning in my Measuring Usability and UX course, and vice versa. I didn’t anticipate how much overlap there would be. As I was learning to write in plain language, it struck me how important plain language is to Usability/UX. And as I was practicing writing in different tones of voice, I considered UX/Usability again. I debated whether I should take two classes at once, and the workload is a challenge for sure, but I’ve benefitted from this joint perspective.