All posts tagged tone

How to loosen the collar of your web copy

Social media has made the web more of a conversation (it was already pretty chatty). Companies who want to maintain a one-sided, sales pitch relationship with their customers come off as stiffs. For many businesses with web sites, adopting a tone of voice online that is a little less formal, a little more smart casual, will help their users to connect with them.

I am not talking about LOL-ing up your copy with txtspk, slang and swearwords FTW! But undoing the top button and taking off the tie will allow you to appear friendly, trustworthy, approachable and willing to interact. Here are 9 practical tips to soften up your style:

How to write in faux legalese

Editing a sales brochure recently I came across this line and many more like it:

‘If required [Company name] can therefore provide an introduction to a solicitor.’

This is what George Orwell hated. It is an unnecessarily inflated way to say something simple. Look at all the bits that the writer did not need:

Does your web site suffer from the vuvuzela effect?

I couldn’t help laughing at a gag on the radio yesterday. It was a Classic FM style spoof ad: ‘Relax,’ said the deep male voice, ‘to the soothing sound of … Vuvuzela Moods.’

If you have no idea what a vuvuzela is, I’m hazarding a guess that you don’t follow football. Switch on any broadcast of the 2010 World Cup and the first thing you hear is the blaring, persistent, invasive drone of what sounds like thousands of cheap plastic horns being raspberried into deafeningly by thousands of untrained lips all at the same time.

Which is what it is.

Sprezzatura (making complexity appear simple)

The Cambridge University Accommodation Service provide a remarkable service: they find lodgings for thousands of University people; or find tenants for the University, colleges and private landlords, depending how you look at it. The remarkable bit is that their friendly, personalised service is free – even to landlords most of the listings are without charge.

To make this happen through a web site is difficult, because there are so many parties involved. Students, scholars and staff are looking for accommodation, but sometimes departments look on their behalf. The University wants to fill its houses and rooms, as do individual Colleges, but only sometimes, and sporadically. Private landlords also want tenants, and hotels and B&Bs would like to advertise in case anyone needs a short-term stopover…

And the staff need to co-ordinate all this behind the scenes.

Holding back notes on the trumpet and coming out top on Google

Two things stand out for me about estate agent Kevin Henry.
Firstly, they have a genuine passion about Saffron Walden because they’re local and have lived there for years, unlike the corporate agents who open hollow branches everywhere.
Secondly, because of this authenticity and experience – and years of hard work – they are repeatedly the number [...]