Tone of voice guide

At the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, we communicate with a range of people, for a range of reasons. We connect atmospheric science to people’s lives, helping others understand the atmosphere today and prepare for the future.

Our tone of voice, in line with UK Research and Innovation guidelines, sets out the principles and techniques that help us make sure our communications are consistent and good quality, strengthen our impact as an organisation, and help us achieve our vision and mission

We want our words to have confident clarity. To create confident clarity, we follow three communication principles: 

These help us to sound clear, credible, forward-looking, and aligned with our values.

When communicating for NCAS, we have the confidence to write and speak clearly and simply. We respect people’s time by making sure our communications are purposeful and to the point. This includes spoken and video content such as film and presentations, as well as all written materials.

Our communications have an energy that comes from using straightforward language and keeping our sentences focused. We think carefully about our audiences, and we create clarity for them.

To ensure confident clarity across all NCAS communications, we follow three key principles.

We’re always conscious about how we communicate.

This means putting our audiences first: knowing what’s most important to get across and going straight to that information. It means not wasting our words, but paring back messages to what’s essential. It means writing with a clear sense of what we want people to understand or do, so that what we’re sharing is useful and relevant. Being focused reflects our intelligence and credibility and helps us come across as clear and confident.

People are busy – with less time and more distractions than ever before.

People appreciate communications that feel relevant and get straight to the point, and make it easy for them to find what they need. The key is to think about the desired outcome of our communication before we start writing.

Tip: Before you begin writing, focus on the outcomes and audience needs. Put crucial information up front and in places where it can’t be missed.

We communicate with many different types of people: civil servants, researchers, funders, businesspeople, the public, and each other.

Our audiences – regardless of expertise or sector – appreciate clear and concise communications that are easy to understand and act on. So we need to make every word count and boil our messages down to their clearest. This doesn’t mean sacrificing detail, but using straightforward language, rather than unnecessary jargon or formal words.

Tip: A large part of good writing is good editing. Read over what you’ve written and ask yourself: Is this the clearest way to say this? Is all of this detail essential for this audience? Am I being as direct and concise as possible?

We strengthen our communications by tightly focusing our sentences and paragraphs.

This improves the energy and readability of our writing. Shorter sentences are easier to scan and absorb – they’re much more accessible for people

who are reading quickly or on a screen. The longer a sentence is, the less likely it is to be read and understood. It’s important to vary the length of our sentences to create pace and rhythm – the occasional short sentence adds impact. We also keep our paragraphs short and manageable. White space helps emphasise what’s on the page.

Tip: Focus each sentence on one idea, and each paragraph with a single thought or topic.

Our communications need to focus on people and sound human.

This means writing in a way that connects, and not hiding behind our knowledge or complexity. We create clarity by using straightforward language and talking in our own voice (using ‘we’ and ‘our’ instead of the more removed NCAS). This also helps people to trust us and feel connected to our work.

We want to make sure even the most complex topics are accessible.

We think of our intended audience and choose the most straightforward words possible to get our points across and convey our meaning. This is not over-simplifying our communications, but opening them up. Complex and obscure language does not sound more impressive or more professional – it actually makes our communications harder to read. Straightforward language improves readability for everyone: busy professionals, people without English as their first language, people who know very little about atmospheric science.

Tip: Consider simple word swaps that can strengthen your writing. For example, say use instead of writing utilise; use start instead of commence; say cause instead of give rise to; use affect instead of have an effect upon; sat many instead of numerous. 

The active voice says who or what is doing the action in a sentence.

It makes sentences more human and direct. Passive language is often vague. It’s used in academic writing to create objectivity, and to focus more on the action than on the people doing it. And it’s used in press releases to create a more neutral style for sharing content through news channels. But for most audiences, passive verbs simply make writing more wordy, formal and distant. We want to start our sentences with the people doing the action, even if this is a general ‘we’. Using active language helps us take ownership and gives our writing clarity, confidence and credibility. For example, the passive statement ‘a new strategy has been developed’ can be made active by rewriting it as ‘we’ve developed a new strategy’.

We also want to speak directly to our readers by saying ‘you’, instead of talking about them as if they’re not there. Internally, this means writing to each other as ‘you’ instead of as ‘employees’ or ‘colleagues’ – this is a more human and inclusive style of writing. 

Tip: When we’re talking about something we’ve done or are doing as an organisation, we use the first person ‘we’ and ‘our’, as long as it’s clear who ‘we’ refers to. This means only using the more removed third person (NCAS) when we need to specify the name for clarity. 

Not everyone we communicate with shares the same knowledge, so jargon and acronyms can be a barrier.

Using jargon can make NCAS and what we do feel exclusive and hard to relate to, so we only use it when it’s genuinely necessary, helpful, or as shorthand between specialists. If you can replace it with more everyday language, you should. 

Serious communications (like reports and announcements) need to be carefully worded, accurate, logically structured, and clear – but unnecessary formality can make things wordy, harder to read, and more difficult to hear a real, human voice 

As an organisation, we do science and make things happen in our research community – our writing should reflect this. Replacing a noun with a verb will help us sound more active and concise. For example, ‘we evaluated the outcomes’ uses a verb and ‘we conducted an evaluation of the outcomes’ uses a noun. Cut straight to the verb to invigorate your writing. 

Tip: Look for nouns that can be turned into verbs. For example, ‘behaviour’, ‘consideration’ and ‘analysis’ can become ‘behave’, ‘consider’ and ‘analyse’, helping you to bring energy and action to your writing.

We make sure our communications are accessible to audiences across the board: easy to engage with and absorb.

We help each person find and read the level of detail they need, and to see any next steps. 

Readers of all types quickly glance over text, either to find what they’re looking for or to decide whether something is worth reading more carefully.

We have to be realistic about how people read, or rather don’t, especially online. This means that we need to give people something of value within seconds. 

We need to structure and lay out communications as helpfully as possible.

If we’re asking people to do something, we need to make sure this jumps out at them as a clear next step. Think about the essential things you want your reader to know, or that most people reading will need to know. Then highlight this information by putting it in places people will easily see it: at the beginning of pages, sentences and paragraphs – and in titles, headings, links, and bullet point lists. 

Tip: Link text needs to show people in a short, clear phrase where the link goes. Not only does this help key information stand out, it makes links accessible, particularly for people using screen readers. Avoid vague link phrases like ‘here’, ‘click here’ and ‘find out more’, as they give no information at all.

If you’re writing a longer piece of content, it’s helpful to ‘layer’ the information.

At the start, give everyone a summary or list of key points. Then move to more detail for those who want it, and perhaps also link to maximum detail that sits elsewhere. We want to make it easy for people to find and read to the level of detail they need, and show them the way with links and calls to action.