Tone adjustment

What tone adjustment is

Tone adjustment changes the register of a document and nothing else. The facts, the figures, the commitments and the order all stay exactly as they are. What changes is the level of formality, the assumed relationship with the reader, and the amount of explanation carried per sentence. A document written for one audience comes back readable by another, still saying the same thing.

It is a specialist pass you can buy on its own, not a rung on the editing ladder. It is not line editing, which improves how sentences sound for the reader they already have; tone adjustment changes who the reader is. It is not copyediting and will not correct the document throughout, and it is not a proofread. It is also not a plain-language rewrite, which simplifies vocabulary and sentence structure for comprehension. A tone adjustment can move a document to be warmer and still leave it technically demanding, because warmth and difficulty are separate dials.

Where you have a written tone of voice, that is the standard I edit towards, and I quote the relevant lines of it in the note that comes back. Where you do not, the first call settles the target in words we both agree on before I start, because "more professional" means four different things to four people.

When you need one

The paired cases come up constantly. A technical note has to go out as a customer letter: the engineer's version is accurate and reads as an accusation, so it is rewritten to explain rather than to defend, with every technical statement intact. A rejection has to be firm without being cold: the draft is either so softened that the supplier re-applies, or so blunt that a working relationship ends over a form letter.

Others: an internal memo that now has to go to the board. A policy written for lawyers that is about to be published for customers. A founder post drafted in anger. An apology that reads as though it was cleared by someone who was not sorry. A recruitment page that sounds like a procurement document.

You do not need this if the document is aimed at the right reader and simply reads badly, which is a line edit. You do not need it if the facts themselves have to change for the new audience, because that is new writing, not an edit, and I will say so rather than quote for an edit that becomes a rewrite halfway through. And if the trouble is that six people write in six registers, the durable fix is a tone of voice document, not repeated edits.

What gets changed

• Distance. How far the writer stands from the reader. The passive voice, third-person references to your own business, and phrases like "it has been determined" all push the reader away, and sometimes that is correct.
• The load-bearing verbs. "You must" and "we require" against "please" and "we would ask". The obligation is unchanged. What changes is whether it reads as an instruction or a request.
• Explanation per sentence. A specialist audience needs none and resents being given it. A customer audience needs a short clause after each term. The facts do not move; the scaffolding around them does.
• Where the point sits. Bad news to a customer usually needs the decision first and the reasoning after. Bad news to a supplier usually needs the reasoning first so the decision reads as considered.
• The closing. What the reader is invited to do, and how. A firm refusal that ends with a real route back is remembered differently from one that ends with a policy reference.

What you get

The adjusted document. In the format you sent, ready to go out, with the facts unchanged. If the document exists in two versions for two audiences, you get both, clearly labelled.

The marked-up version. Tracked changes throughout. Tone is the edit people disagree with most, and being able to see the original beside the change is how the disagreement gets resolved in ten minutes instead of a week.

A half-page note on the register. The target we agreed, written as a short set of rules, with two or three before-and-after pairs from your own document. This is the part your team reuses, and it is the start of a tone of voice standard if you do not already have one.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Guelph company that makes water-treatment controllers has to tell 40 customers that a firmware fault caused false readings for six weeks. The engineering team writes two pages. It is accurate, it is complete, and it opens with the fault classification and a paragraph on the testing regime. Read by a customer it sounds like a defence prepared in advance.

The tone adjustment keeps every technical statement and every date. The decision moves to the top: what happened, what it affected, what the company is doing, what the customer should do today. The classification and the testing detail move to the second page, where the reader who wants them will find them. Three sentences using the passive voice to avoid saying who was responsible are rewritten in the first person. The same message goes out at 900 words instead of 1,100, and the technical appendix stays untouched for the two customers who ask for it. Nothing was softened and no fact left the letter.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who the new reader is, what you need them to feel and do, and what the document must not stop saying. No charge.
2. A written target. Two or three sentences describing the register, agreed before I start, so we are not judging the result against different pictures.
3. A fixed price in writing. Based on length and on whether one version or two are needed.
4. The pass. One to three working days for most documents, longer where a legal or technical reviewer has to check that nothing moved.
5. Delivery. Adjusted document, marked-up version and the register note, with one round of revisions included.

What it costs

Tone adjustment is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. It is usually a small piece of work, and the price reflects length, the number of versions, and whether anyone else has to approve the wording. The number is fixed in writing before anything starts. The pricing page explains the four ways I work, if a recurring need would be better handled another way.

What happens next

If this is the third document in a year that needed its register changed, write the standard once: tone of voice covers how the same business should sound in a sales page and in an apology. If the adjusted document also has to be correct, a copyedit follows. And if the new audience needs simpler language as well as a different register, that is plain-language editing, quoted separately. This edit is finished when it is delivered, and nothing further is assumed.