Journal tags: tone

I’ve mentioned before that one of my roles at Clearleft is to be a content buddy:

If anyone is writing a talk, or a blog post, or a proposal and they want an extra pair of eyes on it, I’m there to help.

Ideally this happens in real time over video while we both have the same Google doc open:

That way, instead of just getting the suggestions, we can talk through the reasoning behind each one.

I was doing that recently with Rebecca when she was writing an announcement blog post for the Leading Design on-demand platform.

Talking through the structure, I suggested this narrative flow:

1. Start by describing the problem from the reader’s perspective—put yourself in their shoes and enumerate their struggles. This is the part of the story where you describe the dragon in all its horrifying detail.
2. Now show them the sword, the supernatural aid that you can hand to them. Describe the product in purely subjective terms. No need to use adjectives. Let the scale of the offering speak for itself.
3. Then step back into the reader’s shoes and describe what life will be like after they’ve signed up and they’ve slain the dragon.
4. Finish with the call to adventure.

I think that blog post turned out well. And we both had good fun wrangling it into shape.

Today I was working on another great blog post, this time by Luke. Alas, the content buddying couldn’t be in real time so I had to make my suggestions asynchronously.

I still like to provide some reasoning for my changes, so I scattered comments throughout. I was also able to refer to something I put together a little while back…

Here’s the Clearleft tone of voice and style guide document.

I tried to keep it as short as possible. There’s always a danger that the style guide section in particular could grow and grow, so I kept to specific things that have come up in actual usage.

I hadn’t looked at it in a while so I was able to see it with somewhat fresh eyes today. Inevitably I spotted some things that could be better. But overall, I think it’s pretty good.

It’s just for internal use at Clearleft, but rather than have it live in a Google Drive or Dropbox folder, I figured it would be easier to refer to it with a URL. And we’ve always liked sharing our processes openly. So even though it’s probably of no interest to anyone outside of Clearleft, here it is: toneofvoice.clearleft.com

2020 was the year of the virus. 2021 was the year of the vaccine …and the virus, obviously, but still it felt like the year we fought back. With science!

Whenever someone writes and shares one of these year-end retrospectives the result is, by its very nature, personal. These last two years are different though. We all still have our own personal perspectives, but we also all share a collective experience of The Ongoing Situation.

Like, I can point to three pivotal events in 2021 and I bet you could point to the same three for you:

1. getting my first vaccine shot in March,
2. getting my second vaccine shot in June, and
3. getting my booster shot in December.

So while on the one hand we’re entering 2022 in a depressingly similar way to how we entered 2021 with COVID-19 running rampant, on the other hand, the odds have changed. We can calculate risk. We’ve got more information. And most of all, we’ve got these fantastic vaccines.

I summed up last year in terms of all the things I didn’t do. I could do the same for 2021, but there’s only one important thing that didn’t happen—I didn’t catch a novel coronavirus.

It’s not like I didn’t take some risks. While I was mostly a homebody, I did make excursions to Zürich and Lisbon. One long weekend in London was particurly risky.

At the end of the year, right as The Omicron Variant was ramping up, Jessica and I travelled to Ireland to see my mother, and then travelled to the States to see her family. We managed to dodge the Covid bullets both times, for which I am extremely grateful. My greatest fear throughout The Situation hasn’t been so much about catching Covid myself, but passing it on to others. If I were to give it to a family member or someone more vulnerable than me, I don’t think I could forgive myself.

Now that we’ve seen our families (after a two-year break!), I’m feeling more sanguine about this next stage. I’ll be hunkering down for the next while to ride out this wave, but if I still end up getting infected, at least I won’t have any travel plans to cancel.

But this is meant to be a look back at the year that’s just finished, not a battle plan for 2022.

There were some milestones in 2021:

1. I turned 50,
2. TheSession.org turned 20, and
3. Adactio.com also turned 20.

This means that my websites are ²/_5ths of my own age. In ten years time, my websites will be ¹/₂ of my own age.

Most of my work activities were necessarily online, though I did manage the aforementioned trips to Switzerland and Portugal to speak at honest-to-goodness real live in-person events. The major projects were:

1. Publishing season two of the Clearleft podcast in February,
2. Speaking at An Event Apart Online in April,
3. Hosting UX Fest in June,
4. Publishing season three of the Clearleft podcast in September, and
5. Writing a course on responsive design in November.

Outside of work, my highlights of 2021 mostly involved getting to play music with other people—something that didn’t happen much in 2020. Band practice with Salter Cane resumed in late 2021, as did some Irish music sessions. Both are now under an Omicron hiatus but this too shall pass.

Another 2021 highlight was a visit by Tantek in the summer. He was willing to undergo quarantine to get to Brighton, which I really appreciate. It was lovely hanging out with him, even if all our social activities were by necessity outdoors.

But, like I said, the main achievement in 2021 was not catching COVID-19, and more importantly, not passing it on to anyone else. Time will tell whether or not that winning streak will be sustainable in 2022. But at least I feel somewhat prepared for it now, thanks to those magnificent vaccines.

2021 was a shitty year for a lot of people. I feel fortunate that for me, it was merely uneventful. If my only complaint is that I didn’t get to travel and speak as much I’d like, well boo-fucking-hoo, I’ll take it. I’ve got my health. My family members have their health. I don’t take that for granted.

Maybe 2022 will turn out to be similar—shitty for a lot of people, and mostly unenventful for me. Or perhaps 2022 will be a year filled with joyful in-person activities, like conferences and musical gatherings. Either way, I’m ready.

The Clearleft newsletter goes out every two weeks on a Thursday. You can peruse the archive to see past editions.

I think it’s a really good newsletter, but then again, I’m the one who writes it. It just kind of worked out that way. In theory, anyone at Clearleft could write an edition of the newsletter.

To make that prospect less intimidating, I put together a document for my colleagues describing how I go about creating a new edition of the newsletter. Then I thought it might be interesting for other people outside of Clearleft to get a peek at how the sausage is made.

So here’s what I wrote…

Topics

The description of the newsletter is:

A round-up of handpicked hyperlinks from Clearleft, covering design, technology, and culture.

It usually has three links (maybe four, tops) on a single topic.

The topic can be anything that’s interesting, especially if it’s related to design or technology. Every now and then the topic can be something that incorporates an item that’s specifically Clearleft-related (a case study, an event, a job opening). In general it’s not very salesy at all so people will tolerate the occasional plug.

You can use the “iiiinteresting” Slack channel to find potential topics of interest. I’ve gotten in the habit of popping potential newsletter fodder in there, and then adding related links in a thread.

Tone

Imagine you’re telling a friend about something cool you’ve just discovered. You can sound excited. Don’t worry about this looking unprofessional—it’s better to come across as enthusiastic than too robotic. You can put real feelings on display: anger, disappointment, happiness.

That said, you can also just stick to the facts and describe each link in turn, letting the content speak for itself.

If you’re expressing a feeling or an opinion, use the personal pronoun “I”. Don’t use “we” unless you’re specifically referring to Clearleft.

But most of the time, you won’t be using any pronouns at all:

So-and-so has written an article in such-and-such magazine on this-particular-topic.

You might find it useful to have connecting phrases as you move from link to link:

Speaking of some-specific-thing, this-other-person has a different viewpoint.

or

On the subject of this-particular-topic, so-and-so wrote something about this a while back.

Structure

The format of the newsletter is:

1. An introductory sentence or short paragraph.
2. A sentence describing the first link, ending with the title of the item in bold.
3. A link to the item on its own separate line.
4. An excerpt from the link, usually a sentence or two, styled as a quote.
5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 another two times.


Take a look through the archive of previous newsletters to get a feel for it.

Subject line

Currently the newsletter is called dConstruct from Clearleft. The subject line of every edition is in the format:

dConstruct from Clearleft — Title of the edition

(Note that’s an em dash with a space on either side of it separating the name of the newsletter and the title of the edition)

I often try to come up with a pun-based title (often a punny portmanteau) but that’s not necessary. It should be nice and short though: just one or two words.