I came across a letter some time back that was written in a stilted, pompous and preachy voice. It was off-putting. It sounded like it came from some dogmatic person.
Do you take any notice about your voice in business writing?
Does it matter to you?
Does it concern your readership?
Basically, voice is made up of several components in your writing. It includes the language you use, your style, tone, grammar and even the length of your sentences.
The two main categories of voice are conversational or informal and formal. But you can take these two categories to the extremes. You can write in an ultra-informal way. You can also write in a formal way that makes your writing sound like a legal, academic or government document.
Do you ever change your voice to suit your readership?
I am not going to go into the finer points of voice. It would be too long-winded and would take up too much of your time. I’ll save a detailed explanation of voice for those who use my business writing service and need help.
Let’s look at an informal voice:
What a lovely day. I’m sitting on the beach with the sun burning on my back. I can feel the sand between my toes and I can smell the fresh sea breeze.
Let’s try to put that into formal language:
I’m sitting on the beach on a hot summer’s day with the exterior temperature reaching a high of 30 degrees Celsius. I am comfortable in the extreme and am enjoying the rays of sunshine on my torso. All my senses are lifted by this sensory experience.
You see, things can be put in many different ways using different voices.
I’ve only mentioned two, informal and formal, but there are many others.
Voice does matter because the correct voice can help you connect with your readership.
If you use the wrong voice, it can put your readers off and result in them not continuing to read your document.
If you need help with voice training for your writing or require documents to be written in a different voice to suit a specific audience, then let me know. Send me an email and I’ll see if I can help.
