Voice and tone

It’s important to think about both voice and tone when we are creating content. The way we say things affects how users perceive us and interact with our services.

Springer Nature’s voice is its personality. It should not change, regardless of what messaging users are consuming.

Tone conveys the emotional context of messaging. This can change, dependent on what the user is interacting with and when.

This guidance explains how to apply Springer Nature's voice and tone to our writing.

This is a work in progress. If you have any feedback, let us know in the Ask UX Content channel on Microsoft Teams.

How to use our voice

Springer Nature brand attributes form the basis of our voice.

Here are the brand attributes, with some examples of how to apply them.

Friendly

Being friendly means:

• write things as you’d say them out loud (for example: ‘We’ve sent you a security code’ instead of ‘You have been sent a security code’)
• use positive contractions like ‘you’ll’ instead of ‘you will’
• do not use negative contractions like ‘don’t’ or ‘won’t’, as they have been shown to confuse some people
• do not confuse friendly with casual. This helps us with our international users. For example, use ‘hello’ instead of ‘hi’, ‘thank you’ instead of ‘thanks’

Case study: Snapp author partial submissions email

In this example, we changed some of the negative words (‘failure’, ‘lack’, ‘no’) to more positive language that makes us appear friendlier.

It’s also important to consider how your users may be feeling when they’re using our products or receive our communications. In this example, we may not know whether their submission will be successful, but there are small changes we can make that make us sound more open and friendlier about receiving their submission.

Transparent

Being transparent means:

• be specific about what will happen and when (for example, ‘We’ll email you within 24 hours’)
• make costs clear upfront – there should be no unwelcome surprises
• avoid acronyms or explain them the first time you use them
• use the active voice to make clear who is doing what
• explain how hidden processes work, such as manuscript transfers or peer review models, where this will add clarity (not confusion)

Case study: AI-generated article summaries

In this example, we’re making it clear that the article summaries have been created using AI.

Simplified

Write short sentences (maximum 25 words).

Choose words that are easy for everyone to understand.

Remember that some of the vocabulary Springer Nature’s users use and are familiar with may be terms that, at first glance, do not appear simple to someone outside of the scientific community. If a word is an industry-wide term, use it but introduce or explain it first. Always be guided by user research on the best words to use. It’s important to maintain consistency.

Examples of industry terms may include:

• corresponding author
• affiliated institution
• open access
• amendments
• revisions
• citations
• version of record
• accesses
• articles in print
• Impact Factor

Confident

What does it mean to be ‘confident’?

• be direct and remove unnecessary filler words
• think of the purpose of the text. If we're trying to encourage users to click through from an email or move forward through our products, we probably do not need to add a lot of information

Remember users only read around 20% of the content on a page, so we want to make it as simple for them as possible.

Please, thank you and sorry

Use 'please' and ‘thank you’ sparingly, they can come across as insincere or otherwise out of context and often just get in the way.

Say sorry when we’ve done something wrong and, where possible, tell the user what they can do next. Sorry can sound insincere if overused, so say it once and move on. We do not need to say sorry if the problem is due to user error.

How to use tone

We want to sound human and empathetic. Using empathy in writing means being sensitive to the user’s context, particularly in stressful moments.

When it comes to error messaging, payments and transactions, time-based interactions, clarity always comes first.

We will describe how to apply tone in future guide updates.

Using tone and voice when writing for a global audience

We use British English across Springer Nature’s products and services. (You may find examples of US English in legacy content, some marketing emails and some scholarly content).

Our research shows only 27% of respondents have English as their first language. 35% use some kind of adaptation to support their use of the internet, with translation tools being the most used.

We’ll look into internationalisation and localisation strategies separate to this guidance.

Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs describe when you join a verb to another word.

For example, adding the verb ‘take’ to other words such as ‘take up’, ‘take off’, ‘take in’, ‘take over’, and ‘take on’. Each of these have a different meaning and are context dependent.

These are difficult to translate to an international audience and should be avoided.

Idioms and colloquialisms

We should also avoid idioms or colloquial words, as they can be confusing.

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