Schema and router for brand voice. This file holds no brand voice content — per-brand voice lives in each business’s Strategy docs, which monorepo/docs/design/brands.md already declares as its home. Creating a second home here would fork it.
Voice is a design constraint: on every target, the words are part of the interface, and the F.A.S.T. constraint applies to them exactly as it applies to layout. Copy that takes three sentences to say what one says fails Simple regardless of how well it reads.
What a brand voice doc must define
Section titled “What a brand voice doc must define”Seven slots. A voice doc is complete when all seven are filled; anything less leaves an agent guessing.
| Slot | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Audience | Who is being spoken to, in their own terms — not a demographic bracket |
| Register | Formal ↔ conversational, and where the line sits for this brand |
| Person and tense | ”you”/“we”/“I”, present or future — stated, not left to the writer |
| Vocabulary do / don’t | Named terms to use and terms to never use, with the preferred substitute |
| Sentence rhythm | Typical length, whether fragments are allowed, how much subordination |
| Claims discipline | What may be asserted, what needs a number, what needs a source, what is never claimed |
| CTA style | How an ask is phrased, and how hard it may push |
Per-brand voice SSOT
Section titled “Per-brand voice SSOT”| Brand | Voice SSOT | State |
|---|---|---|
| SDC | SDC/Strategy/Brand Voice and Tone Guidelines.md | Stub — a > [!todo] complete this plus two Key Success Factor transclusions. Zero of seven slots filled. |
| MBR | MBR/Strategy/Branding Decisions.md | Substantive, but weighted to visual branding (palette, typography, wordmark, logo animation). Verbal-voice slots largely unfilled. |
| TS | — | Missing. No voice doc exists for talbotstevens.com. |
Filling these is Strategy work requiring Talbot; this file supplies the template, not the answers.
Cross-brand rule: lead with bold key points (Talbot, 2026-09-28)
Section titled “Cross-brand rule: lead with bold key points (Talbot, 2026-09-28)”Make skimming fast. A paragraph or bullet that carries a point opens with a short bold lead-in naming that point, then explains it. This applies almost everywhere: reports and artifacts, task-file responses, and chat.
- Good: “Existing research: incomplete and dangerous. The existing research on …”
- Good: “Amounts at risk. Record US valuations affect almost every equity investor …”
- Good: “Critical question. No one can predict when the next market drop will come …”
- Weak: “The bigger issue is the money already invested.” The bold phrase sits mid-sentence and doesn’t name the point.
- Weak: “For Canadians, taxes change which account to use.” Better: ""Worth It” factors: taxation, time.”
The lead-in is a label (2–5 words) or a one-line claim. Keep the body plain. Don’t invent jargon a reader has to decode (e.g. “protection figure” — say “worst decline”).
Related
Section titled “Related”- Design-Principles §7 — voice as a design constraint
monorepo/docs/design/brands.md— declares Strategy docs as the home for positioning and voice- Content-First-Web-Dev — lists brand voice as a Phase-0 input