Nobody hands you a style guide and expects you to read it cover to cover. This one's built to be skimmed, used, and come back to. Six steps. Start here and you'll be writing on-voice copy before lunch.
For new hires & partners
Get on-brand in six steps.
TL;DR
About 30 minutes start to finish. After this you'll be able to write a Workzone blog post, email, or landing page that sounds like us, and pass the pre-flight checklist on the first try.
Start here.
How to use this guide
Don't try to memorize it. Nobody does. Skim the six steps below once, bookmark the pages you'll come back to, and lean on the Pre-flight Checklist every single time you publish. That's the whole system: read once, reference forever.
If you only have five minutes, read Step 1 and Step 2. Voice and the hard rules cover 80% of what goes wrong.
The six steps
01Step 1 of 6
Read the voice in one minute.
Workzone sounds like a sharp colleague who's been in the trenches. Five traits: Direct, Confident, Empathetic, Specific, Human. Pain always comes before product.
Open Voice & Tone02Step 2 of 6
Memorize the eight Hard Rules.
No emdashes. No 'didn't just X, also Y' constructions. Banned words: Real, Weep, Chaos. One exclamation point max. No jargon soup. No passive hedging. No corporate softening. Pain before product.
See the rules03Step 3 of 6
Anchor every piece to a Pillar.
Four pillars: adoption (1), visibility (2), industry fit (3), right-sized power (4). Every blog, email, or page must connect to at least one.
Explore pillars04Step 4 of 6
Pick the right tone for the channel.
Voice stays constant. Tone shifts. Blog = relaxed. Sales = direct. Social = authoritative. Email = warm but tight. Webinar = conversational.
Channel guidance05Step 5 of 6
Calibrate against Before/After examples.
When you're not sure if your copy is on-voice, read a 'before' (generic B2B), feel the blandness, then read the 'after.' Twelve worked examples cover most situations.
See examples06Step 6 of 6
Run the Pre-flight Checklist.
Before publishing anything, run through the voice, hard-rules, structure, and AEO checks. If it doesn't pass, it doesn't ship.
Open checklistYou're done.
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