Communicating Tone in Business Writing

Printwand reports:

"Conveying tone verbally is relatively easy; you might yell if you’re angry or use dramatic inflection if you’re being sarcastic. However, conveying tone in business writing isn’t as easy since you don’t have the luxury of pitch and timbre to get your point across. Instead, you have to rely on a number of different techniques to make sure your intent comes across clearly and that your tone is dynamic enough to keep your reader entertained...Tailor your tone to appeal to the people you’re writing for...Think about the actual content of your writing and which types of tone are most appropriate. If you were trying to promote a new product, you’d use exciting and energetic language. On the other hand, an apology for a recalled item would use a more serious tone...Consider where your writing will actually appear. A post on a social media platform would be casual and conversational, while a press release would be more professional and informative. These factors help to create the basic blueprint for a tone that makes your business writing more effective, but it’s not something you can calculate like a math problem. To truly bring your writing to life, you must give it its own personality...Your tone gives your writing some personality, which in turn gives your brand a personality...Presenting just the facts alone will leave all of the purchasing decision power to the consumer’s brain. However, present these same facts with a unique tone and you’ll move that decision power to the consumer’s gut, where they’re much more likely to act without hesitation. The easiest way to establish unique types of tone in writing is by having a unique brand. If you have a strong brand identity, you can translate many of those ideals into your copywriting. If you’re not sure about those details, it might be a good time to put together a brand 'bible' and establish your identity. Once you know what your brand is all about, try taking these qualities and creating a 'character' that embodies your brand...Creating a character makes it easier to think about how your brand would speak if it had a mouth–or more importantly, how it would write if it had fingers. Of course, if you are your own brand, then you already have the perfect character to match your tone: yourself. Think about the way you speak, the words you use, how you gather your thoughts and even the jokes you like to tell; pepper all of these into your copywriting...Generic tone breeds generic results, so add as many variables as possible to establish pitch-perfect tone in your copywriting...It’s not enough to decide to add humor to your writing–you have to decide whether that humor is going to be goofy, witty, sarcastic, weird, self-deprecating and so on. On the flip side, a serious tone could be formal, conversational, imperative, apologetic and so on. It’s okay to have multiple brand personality variables...Remember that tone isn’t something that happens overnight and you can only get better with practice. Try writing some examples of tone in business writing to strengthen your identity. Seek out feedback from others to flesh out your voice. Every time you set out to write something (whether it’s a blog post or a text message), you’ll become more adept at hitting the right tone every time."