The Importance of Tone in Your Writing

Have you ever received a text and read it in a different way than the sender intended? This happens to me all the time. Before I all get up in arms over a seemingly passive-aggressive text 🙃, I have to remember that I may have read it the wrong way. Tone and emphasis are crucial for a reader to understand your message the way you intended. Let’s chat about some ways you can emphasize tone in writing so there’s no room for confusion.

People Read Differently

Everyone has their own style of reading and writing. When I read a sentence with a period, I interpret it as serious. An exclamation point means excitement or happiness. So, I read these two sentences very differently:

Thanks so much for that.

Thanks SO much for that!

How did you read them? I read the first as sarcastic and the second as sincere, but the first message could be sincere from the sender, too.

As the sender, you might have the best intentions with your message, but it all depends on how your recipient receives the message. In business writing, learn how to speak to your audience in a way they receive positively.

Understanding Your Audience

As with everything in business, your tone should cater to your audience. Understanding how they interpret your message can be helpful when crafting copy. Talk to them in your DMs, send a survey, ask questions in your story, and talk to your clients to learn more about them.

Emphasis should also align with your brand voice. A more serious brand probably wouldn’t use emojis in their copy. A brand that’s fun and playful probably would. 

I also think it’s important to mention that your brand voice and your personal voice can be different. You might send emojis in your texts all day long, but in your business copy, you keep it more professional. That’s totally fine! Just don’t intermix the two because it’ll end up confusing your audience. They’ll perceive your brand as more casual when you want to be seen as professional.

Emphasis adds personality to your copy. As we learned from my blog on infusing personality and SEO, personality is what differentiates brands. People resonate with different brands based on how their personalities mesh. As you strategically place emphasis in your writing, your audience can start to read your tone of voice and better understand your brand.

9 Ways to Add Emphasis

Pay attention to how you emphasize your message. It helps to read it out loud how it’s written. Listen to how you read these two sentences differently.

I have to go to the store today.

I have to go to the store TODAY.

The added emphasis in the second sentence shows more urgency than the first sentence. You know this person HAS to go to the store TODAY. Whereas the first sentence is more casual and a simple statement saying they have to go to the store today.

These are some ways you can add emphasis to your copy:

• Bolding – Bolding draws attention to the bolded text, making it stand out from the rest of the content. Readers perceive the bolded text as significant.
• Italics – Italics are my personal favorite. They add a subtle emphasis to copy, conveying importance without overpowering the rest of the text.
• CAPITALIZATION – Capitalization indicates importance or urgency. This is one you really don’t want to overuse because it can come across as SHOUTING. 
• Emojis ❤️ – Emojis are fun visual cues to the reader to indicate the intent behind the text. They can convey the tone or mood of the copy. 
• Punctuation! – Punctuation marks (exclamation points, dashes, ellipses, colons, etc.) can add emotion and drama to text. And who doesn’t love a bit of drama?
• Underline – Since underlining is so commonly used with hyperlinks, people associate underlines with hyperlinks, so you might want to only use underlining for clickable links.
• Highlight – Highlighting text with a different color can draw attention to important information or key points. Just make sure it aligns with your brand colors!
• Alignment – Centering text stands out on the page since it’s positioned differently from the rest of the content. 
• (Parentheses) – Parentheses are like a little side conversation in your text, giving the reader extra context.

You don’t have to use all the ideas in your copy. As I said before, make sure it aligns with your brand voice. If you prefer one over another, go with that!

(Can you count how many elements of emphasis I used in this blog?)

When to Place Emphasis

Emphasis can be overused. It’s not something that needs to be added to every sentence. That would just be WAY too overwhelming to the reader. And it would undervalue the times you actually should use emphasis in your copy.

Use it when you want to call out specific words to help the reader better understand your message. The emphasis should cause someone to read the word(s) differently. Here are some examples of when you should use emphasis in your writing:

• Calls to action: Make sure the reader knows the next action you want them to take. Many people opt to underline, bold, or change the color of links. Buttons are also a good option because they stand out from the rest of the text.
• Key points: This is what you really want the reader to pay attention to. These are typically bolded.
• Testimonials: Call attention to testimonials within your copy by italicizing, centering the text, or using a larger font size.
• Headlines: On the backend of your website, tag headlines as H1, H2, or H3, which will typically make the text bigger, change the color, or change the font of the text.
• Tone: Use emphasis on certain words or phrases within your copy to make someone emphasize the words in their head as they read.

Finding Your Tone in Writing

Finding the tone of voice for your brand and in your writing can be a fun activity! Play around with different ways to emphasize words to see what you like best. I always recommend reading copy out loud to see how you emphasize it based on how it’s written. Then, for my overachievers out there, have someone else read it out loud and see if and how they read it differently than how you intended. The tone in your writing can have a big impact on how well your messages are received by your target audience!

Looking for more tips like these? My weekly newsletter is the place to be! Every Wednesday, I send an email with writing tips and resources. Subscribe today!