There is no perfect tone, there is only context
Context is what guides you along the way
I was lamenting my relationship to tone frameworks with Elizabeth McGuane and she uttered the most beautiful response, “There is no perfect tone, only context.” Her words transported me to the very beginning of my career in content design.
It was week two at mega-huge-social-network and I was overwhelmed. I was confident in my ability to write, but how to convey the right brand voice, in the right way, in the right moment? And then I found it: the internal Tone Framework.
Every content designer knows the deep roots a tone framework has in our field. The detailed guidelines that show you how to adapt a brand voice for different situations, depending on customer need. A holdover from the world of marketing, where copywriters would debate whether this or that headline is "on brand."
I was saved. Stick to the framework and my writing would be perfect. Insert situation, output tone.
Except when it came time to write. The tone recommendations never fit just so. The Celebratory tone needed to be tamped down. Or the Informative tone needed to be a bit more encouraging. The final tone was almost always a distant cousin to the original.
After many false starts with the tone framework, I stopped using it.
As it turns out, you don't really need a framework to find the right tone. Because there is no “right” tone.
There are better tones and worse tones. Putting a celebratory spin on a system failure won’t work. But you wouldn’t feel good writing that either. The answer to “how to sound human” shouldn't be found in a lookup table, because you don’t need a framework to be human.
Tone is what happens when voice and context meet.
In user experience writing, your audience probably has a million things on their mind. As in any good conversation, you should meet them where and try to understand their context.
Who are you talking to?
What do they want?
What can you do for them?
What’s going to make this hard?
How do you want them to feel?
There are infinite answers to these questions.
Tone frameworks falsely try to flatten the richness of context into 12 adjectives and a bunch of sliders. Instead of “What tone should we use here?” the question should be “How can we sound like we’re really in this conversation?” It's less about what a framework dictates, and more about what context reveals. You're trying to build a connection, not “be correct.”
If you seek context, tone will come.
“How would you talk to a friend who’s in the same situation as your target user? Remembering that written communication is a conversation can help you settle on the best tone for your purpose.”
Even this definition sets up the idea that there is a best tone. And, as in much of life, there is never one best option for anything. There is no “perfect” tone for all of our users. And that is A-OK.
Let’s think of tone frameworks more as a tone compass. They set the direction, but context is what guides you along the way.