“Stop shouting at me!”
“I wasn’t shouting, I was just emphasizing my point.”
When speaking, it’s absolutely clear when someone is reading you the riot act or giving you a piece of their mind, but when the exchange is in printed form, it’s not nearly so obvious.
Writers are well accustomed with the techniques of imparting a tone of voice. You’ve read many novels; how often did you miss whether the person was happy, sad, frustrated or angry? Of course, novelists have the advantage of using clarifying terms before or after a sentence:
“Oh sure, I’m just supposed to take that on faith,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face.
Let’s use the exact same sentence, but change the context a bit:
“Oh sure, I’m just supposed to take that on faith!” she exclaimed, bitterly recalling how the man robbed her blind on the last deal.
And then again:
“Oh sure, I’m just supposed to take that on faith?” she hissed with more than a sliver of sarcasm underscoring her fury.
In each instance, the words didn’t change, but the reader quickly understood the character’s feelings and tone of voice.
Copywriters chartered with creating a tone of voice for a corporate or product brand have a significantly greater challenge. They don’t have the luxury of using contextual descriptions in their messages. So how do copywriters establish and maintain a favorable and unique tone of voice for an inanimate object? I’ll endeavor to answer that question in my next post.
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