You can visit Writing Guidelines Tool here.
In fast-paced product environments, UX and technical writers often find themselves juggling a delicate balance between sounding formal and staying human, between being consistent and adapting to new contexts. Tone and voice, once defined in a style guide, can easily drift apart when multiple writers work across varied documentation types.
One team member might craft a cheerful onboarding email; another, a terse technical alert. And suddenly, your brand voice isnât a recognized voice anymore, it becomes cacophony.
The root of the problem?
Tone is abstract.
Voice is subjective.
And consistency across documentation teams is a moving target.
The Solution: A Tool to Ground the Voice
To bring clarity to this chaos, I built the Writing Guidelines Tool, a React, based application designed to help content teams visualize, define, and standardize their brandâs tone and voice across every touchpoint.
This tool doesnât just prescribe rules. It makes abstract ideas like âfriendly but authoritativeâ concrete. It helps teams calibrate their tone like they would tune an instrument. Visually, interactively, and collaboratively.
What It Does
The Writing Guidelines Tool enables content professionals to:
- Visualize tone using an intuitive quadrant system
- Define voice attributes that reflect brand personality
- Adapt writing guidelines to fit different content contexts
- Export documentation into formats that integrate with team workflows
How It Works
1. Tone Quadrant: Making the Abstract Tangible
At the heart of the application is the ToneQuadrant, an interactive grid where writers can literally see where their tone falls, between formal and casual, enthusiastic and matter-of-fact.
Itâs like plotting your brandâs emotional fingerprint. Real-time updates reflect changes immediately, so teams can experiment, compare, and align.
Axes Breakdown:
- X-axis: Matter-of-fact ⡠Enthusiastic
- Y-axis: Formal ⡠Casual
2. StyleGuide: More Than Rules, It's A Story
The StyleGuide component captures the soul of the brand. Itâs where purpose, personality, formatting preferences, and the origin story of the brand come together to shape the writing philosophy.
This isn't just about capitalizing headers, it's about writing with identity.
3. VoiceAttributes: Personality, Defined
This module allows teams to specify voice characteristics like âempathetic,â âstraightforward,â or âquirkyâ with the flexibility to tweak those attributes depending on context. Writers can update and view changes in real time, ensuring everyone speaks in the same voice, even in different situations.
4. ContextAdaptation: One Voice, Many Faces
Writing for a help article isnât the same as writing for a marketing page. With ContextAdaptation, teams can define tone strategies for specific scenarios like error messages, onboarding screens, release notes, and more.
Under the Hood
Technical Architecture
Each feature is purposefully modular and extensible:
Core Components
ToneQuadrant
: Drag-and-drop interface for tone visualizationStyleGuide
: Centralized repository for brand languageVoiceAttributes
: Dynamic and context-aware personality traitsContextAdaptation
: Scenario-specific tone guidance
Data Structure
type WritingGuidelinesData = {
styleGuide: { ... };
voiceAndTone: { ... };
grammarMechanics: { ... };
terminology: [...];
};
State Management
- Reactâs
useState
anduseEffect
handle state and initialization - Data is persisted locally via
localStorage
to ensure nothing is lost
Sample: Tone Change Interaction
const handleToneChange = (x: number, y: number) => {
setData(prev => ({
...prev,
voiceAndTone: {
...prev.voiceAndTone,
currentTone: { x, y }
}
}));
};
Exporting the Guidelines
Writers often need to share these insights with stakeholders, developers, or designers. I offer two polished export options:
1. PDF Export
- Styled layouts for readability
- Printable, sharable, and presentation-ready
2. Markdown Export
- Cleanly structured
- Compatible with common documentation platforms
const exportAsPDF = () => {
import('html2pdf.js').then((html2pdf) => {
const element = contentRef.current;
if (!element) return;
const opt = {
margin: 10,
filename: 'writing-guidelines.pdf',
image: { type: 'jpeg', quality: 0.98 },
html2canvas: { scale: 2 },
jsPDF: { unit: 'mm', format: 'a4', orientation: 'portrait' }
};
html2pdf.default().from(element).set(opt).save();
});
};
Use Case in Action
Imagine a team setting up new guidelines:
- Start with default values and tailor the tone quadrant to reflect the brand.
- Input the voice traits: clear, human, a touch of wit.
- Add context rules: error messages should soothe; onboarding should excite.
- Export and share with the broader team. Ensuring every writer speaks with the same voice, regardless of what theyâre writing.
Example:
const contextAdaptation = [
{
context: "Error messages",
tone: "Direct, professional tone that focuses on solution, not blame"
},
{
context: "Onboarding",
tone: "Welcoming, encouraging, and guiding with clear next steps"
}
];
Whatâs Next
This is just the beginning. Future enhancements include:
- Real-time team collaboration
- Integrated version control
- AI-assisted tone suggestions for writers in need of inspiration
- An analytics dashboard to measure tone consistency
- API integration with CMSs and design systems
By giving teams the tools to make tone visible, adaptable, and collaborative, the Writing Guidelines Tool ensures that your brandâs voice is more than words on a page, it becomes a unified, living presence across every experience.