GLOSSARY · GHOSTWRITING
Voice guide
A voice guide is a working document that tells a writer, editor or AI tool how a specific person sounds in writing and what that person is willing to say. It typically contains measured writing features, example posts that are on-voice and off-voice, positions the person holds, topics they cover, phrases they use and phrases they never use, formatting habits and a list of things they will not claim or discuss. Ghostwriters and content teams use it to produce drafts that pass as the person's own and to review drafts against something more concrete than instinct.
How it works in practice
A voice guide usually has five parts. First, a short description of who the person is and who they write for, so a writer knows the reader. Second, the voice profile: sentence length and variation, fragment use, punctuation, contractions, paragraph shape, opener and closer habits. Third, vocabulary: words and phrases the person uses, words they reject, jargon they tolerate, and the names they use for their product and customers. Fourth, positions: the five to ten opinions the person actually holds and is prepared to defend in public, along with the opposite opinions they will not pretend to hold. Fifth, boundaries: topics that are off limits, customers that cannot be named, numbers that cannot be shared, and the disclosure rules for AI or ghostwritten drafts.
Add annotated examples: three posts that sound exactly right with notes on why, and two that sound wrong. The guide is only useful if it is used. Every draft should be checked against it before it reaches the person, and every correction the person makes in review should feed back into the guide. Refresh it quarterly. A guide that has not changed in a year is describing someone who no longer exists, because people's positions and writing change with their business.
Example
One entry in a founder's guide: "Never calls customers 'users'. Says 'teams'. Will say a competitor's product is good when it is. Will not comment on fundraising. Opens posts with a statement, not a question."
Common mistake
Writing the guide once at onboarding and never updating it. Six months later the founder's review edits are all fixing the same drift, and nobody has recorded the fix.