The 12 Elements of Tone

Picture this: You’re launching a major new product. Your website copy is bold and confident, your social media posts are casual and playful, and your technical documentation is dry and complicated. Which one is your real brand?

The truth is, inconsistent tone is one of the quickest ways to erode customer trust. In today’s crowded digital world, with seemingly endless touchpoints, it’s your personality that your audience recognizes and relies on. But how do you translate a single, aspirational tone into language that every writer uses across every platform?

Well, there are a few things to think about — 12 to be exact. Here are the 12 specific elements of tone you need to consider when creating content for your brand.

Key takeaways

• Tone is technical: Brand tone is shaped by 12 measurable linguistic elements, from sentence length and tempo to the use of jargon and contractions.
• Consistency builds trust: Allowing content to use inconsistent tone or terminology erodes customer trust and weakens brand recognition.
• Automation is essential: In the age of AI, only an automated platform like Markup AI enforces nuanced tone rules and style consistency across all enterprise content.

1. Word length 

If you want all readers to understand you clearly, it’s best to use short words. This makes your content accessible to all who engage with it. In terms of tone, short words are simple and direct, while longer ones suggest sophistication and nuance. So the particular tone your company wants to adopt should be reflected in the type of words you use.

Shorter words tend to be punchier and harder, which is great if you want your tone to be bold, while longer words can give a softer, more relaxed effect. So if you want the character of your tone to be pensive and gentle, then it’s good to incorporate longer words into your content.

2. Sentence length 

Shorter sentences give a concise style, while longer ones are more rambling. This means your tone might vary for different content pieces.

Regardless of tone, you should be able to read a whole sentence out loud in a single breath. You want your content to be accessible and easy to understand — because amazing customer experiences can’t happen if you’re confusing your customers.

3. Tempo 

Having a shorter average sentence length is good, but the keyword here is average. To keep readers interested, vary the length of sentences and paragraphs to give an organic, varied rhythm with its own ebbs and flows. This helps establish an authentic tone for your brand, one that engages the reader.

4. Pronouns 

Pronouns are the words that stand in place of the names of people or things. The ones you choose have a significant effect on your tone.

For example, when writing about your company, you can use the first person “we” or the third person “Markup AI.” 

• First person is more immediate, positioning yourself as a group of people
• The third person is much more detached and abstract, with less clarity about who’s speaking. 

When writing for an audience, you can use the second person “you” or the third person “customers,” or “suppliers.” 

• The second person is direct and engaging
• The third person is more distant. 

5. Conciseness 

Conciseness is the ratio of ideas to words. The fewer words you use to convey an idea, the more concise you are.

On a practical level, to be concise is better. Getting to the point saves time and therefore money. It also adheres to the principles of plain language writing, which means your content is accessible to readers of all levels.

But if you want to adopt a more flowing, rambling, or descriptive tone, you’ll need some “extra” words to achieve the laid-back mood you’re going for. You’ll want to sound less matter-of-fact, and adopt a more expressive attitude.

6. Clarity 

If conciseness is the ratio of words to ideas, clarity is the degree to which your readers understand your words and ideas. Regardless of how your tone sounds, making sure your content is clear and understandable is vital to creating positive customer experiences.

Clarity also makes translation and localization easy, as source content is straightforward and easy to understand. This likewise follows the principles of plain language writing. Plain language makes information cognitively accessible for neurodiverse readers. And if you’re writing or translating content for culturally and linguistically diverse communities, plain language doesn’t assume all people have the same literacy levels, or any prior knowledge on the topic they’re reading about.

Markup AI integration: Achieving true clarity at scale requires automation. Markup AI’s Clarity Agent is specifically designed to enforce plain language principles by removing jargon, streamlining complex sentences, and improving readability scores in real-time, ensuring content is accessible to all.

7. Jargon and obscure words 

Jargon is specialized language, used in a particular professional domain, such as law, finance, and engineering, among others.

There are two ways to use jargon: 

• Bad jargon is there to hide the truth and bamboozle people. It confuses or alienates readers and results in negative customer experiences.
• Good jargon can signal that you’re part of a community, and can save time since it’s a concise way to express something.

Likewise, using obscure or unusual words has a similar effect as using jargon — you’re gambling on whether or not the audience will understand what you’re saying.

Top Tip: Terminology councils are a great way to manage the use of jargon and obscure words. You create a list of accepted jargon terms that will help you establish the right tone with your audience. And you also blocklist any terms or words that might alienate readers. Having a terminology council also enables different teams, across different locations, to use consistent and compliant terminology when representing your product or service.

Markup AI integration: Manually tracking jargon is impossible at the enterprise level. The Terminology Agent within Markup AI’s Brand Guardian Agent suite automatically enforces your terminology council’s approved list, guaranteeing consistent product names and vocabulary while instantly flagging or replacing banned jargon.

8. Buzzwords and clichés 

Buzzwords are jargon terms that attract people because of their novelty. Whereas, clichés are words and phrases that have become worn out through overuse.

The same caution applies to buzzwords as to jargon — only use them if you know your audience will understand. And be cautious. Today’s hot buzzword is tomorrow’s embarrassing anachronism. Sometimes, using buzzwords plants a time bomb in your content, guaranteeing it will sound dated in the future. You may be tempted to use buzzwords to impress clients, but again, it’s a risky strategy.

With clichés, there may be times when you need to meet readers where they are by using a cliché you know they’ll respond to. But you could pay a high price if you wind up sounding just like everyone else.

9. Contractions 

Contractions are formed by two words combined into one, such as “you’re,” “don’t,” or ”it’s.” Most people use contractions all the time when they talk, except in the most formal situations. So using them in writing makes your tone informal, because your readers have a strong sense of being in a conversation. In turn, this demonstrates your brand has a laid-back, yet direct attitude.

10. Colloquialisms 

Colloquial language is the language of everyday casual speech. It’s a flexible term, because the definition of casual varies from speaker to speaker, and from culture to culture.

Colloquial language is likely to use contractions (see above) and may also include slang. Writing colloquially doesn’t mean you can’t cover technical features or concepts. It just means you have to adopt the tone of an expert chatting to a non-expert.

For global organizations, creating culturally aware content is vital if you want to create amazing experiences for all your customers. Tone allows you to do more than just translate content, but localize it too. You adjust your tone to suit different international audiences. After all, just translating content from its source language isn’t enough if you want to connect with your audience.

11. Mistakes and rule-breaking 

Technical problems that creep into content include easily confused words (such as “peak one’s interest” instead of “pique one’s interest”), misspellings, and grammar errors. Most would agree that using the wrong word, or spelling something incorrectly, is undesirable in business writing.

Unless it’s part of a deliberate creative strategy.

• The prescriptive view is that we should respect and obey the rules whether we agree with them or not. 
• The descriptive view is that the right way to use language is the way people actually use it in speech and writing — not as reflected in rules created by academics.

Some grammar rules can be bent or broken. For example, starting a sentence with “and” or “but,” or ending one with a preposition like “on,” may not be strictly correct, but more people do it when they talk. So you might want to do the same if your goal is to achieve a casual mood and conversational tone.

Markup AI integration: While creative rule-breaking works for headlines, consistency is non-negotiable for enterprise content. Markup AI’s Consistency and Spelling & Grammar Agents enforce your defined editorial style and foundational accuracy, allowing teams to break rules deliberately where it serves the tone, but only with clear, measurable oversight.

12. Emotionally aware and inclusive 

Creating emotionally aware content is when you deliberately choose words to motivate certain reactions from your readers. Used responsibly, emotive language elevates your tone and makes you stand out, attract, and cultivate loyal customers.

Inclusive language demonstrates awareness of the vast diversity of people in the world. Using inclusive language offers respect, safety, and belonging to all people, regardless of their personal characteristics. We think that all enterprises should have inclusivity at the core of their tone of voice!

Content governance with Markup AI: the perfect match

Once you decide which elements of tone impact your tone of voice, you then need to roll that tone out systematically across your content operations. That’s no easy feat, especially in the age of AI-driven content velocity.

That’s exactly what Markup AI helps you with!

Markup AI is more than just a content improvement tool; it’s a dedicated Content Guardian Agent^SM for your writing workflow. Our specialized Tone Agent, for example, is purpose-built to automatically enforce the standards you’ve defined, such as your brand voice and customer persona. We eliminate the guesswork, ensuring your content is consistently on-brand, compliant, and emotionally appealing from the first draft.Want to learn how Markup.AI can help roll out and maintain your tone of voice? Get early access!