Hello there 👋

How's it hanging?

Fair warning ahead of this week's newsletter: it's very word-nerdy. But we thought it was worth digging into because it's an aspect of brand voice and copy that often slips the net, even though it can make a huge difference.

Let's demonstrate.

For context, the whole idea for this email all started when we both started getting these texts from Specsavers and spent at least 20 minutes in our weekly kickoff call moaning about them👇

Now, as a rule, we try to celebrate copy in this newsletter. We try to share the wins and highlight the cool stuff and the things other brands are doing well that you can learn from.

(This is partly because humans learn better like this and partly because we believe you'll write your best copy if you feel empowered to try things, not afraid to make mistakes.)

However, so far, we've only fallen short of that commitment to positivity when we talked about Brewdog's copy that read like a 15-year-old edge lord trying to be controversial. We stand by calling that out. It was baaaad.

And today, Specsavers goes on our wall of shame.

You see, our big problem with their messages is that there's an almost headteacherly, "I'm disappointed in you tone" that's there to make us feel like we have to book an eye test. It's icky and manipulative, especially as it's a paid-for service by a private company.

And while the framing that it's an obligation and the almost nagging, repetitive structure plays a part in this, it's the full stops that are really at the root of the problem.

See how the full stops are making the texts feel clipped and just the tiniest bit shitty? It's a really good example of how the humble full stop has gone from being invisible and good grammar to a sign of passive aggressiveness.​

So we thought we'd write an email that looks at how punctuation and little stylistic quirks in the way you write can have as much impact on your tone and message as the words you choose.

Fun fact: these little details, like how you punctuate or capitalise or how you spell words, are called orthography.

Let's get into it 👇

Orthography in the spotlight: how Starface turns punctuation into a standout brand voice (and why it works)

Gretchen McCulloch has a whole chapter of her book Because Internet where she goes into how orthography becomes a "typographical tone of voice" when you're writing online.

In other words, your punctuation and spelling and capitalisation become tone markers for your audience to infer the intent of what you're saying.

It's like "Hey." vs "Hey!" vs "Hey 👋" vs "heeeeeeeeey!"

All the same one-word greeting, but completely different tones and impressions, right?

And there are lots of brands that nail this. Monzo have their cheeky asides in brackets or italics, Liquid Death use lots of full stops to underline their deadpan sense of humour, Who Gives a Crap goes the other way and dials things up...

... but none of them do it quite as well as Starface.

TLDR: Starface are a Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha brand that have managed to make pimple patches a status symbol with a deliberately playful and approachable tone of voice that stands out in a market of clinical skincare speak.

And boy, has it worked for them.

According to some reports, they're doing $90M a year in sales and on track to be worth over $1B in the next 5-10 years.

And while their tone of voice is very much of that post-Innocent, nonchalant, Gen Z wheelhouse, it's their use of punctuation that's really interesting.

Check this out 👇

Now, when brands sell to Gen Z, it's usually a flurry of exclamation marks, lots of the ✨ emoji and a "hey bestie!" tone of voice.

(Here's an interesting side note: pre-2005, an exclamation mark was reserved for showing anger or shock, not joy or excitement. The internet completely flipped it and now it's used to soften a message.)

But Starface really understand their audience. They know that Gen Z don't use capital letters. And they know that they prefer chilled out writing styles and value vibe as highly (if not higher) than well-written product descriptions. ​

So, Starface's typographical voice becomes defined by a few things:

• A complete lack of capitalisation
• Incomplete and technically unfinished sentences that function like little emotional beats ("like a hug for your lips")
• Chatty, conversational copy but very subtly so. There's no OTT Innocent-i-ness to it.
• Lots of text and internet slang and Y2K internet-isms
• ASCII smileys (like this :) ) instead of emojis in places.

The result is a product description that feels more like a message from a fellow Gen Z person than a brand trying to sell to you.

But cleverly, by tapping into Gen Z's Y2K nostalgia and using things like ASCII smileys and stretched words (soooo), it also acts as a kind of tonal bridge between generations.

So while Gen Z read the copy like a DM from a friend, older customers are going to spot those Y2K cues and MSN energy and feel invited in rather than aged out.

Love that.

Just look at the difference it makes to their copy if we "fix it" to make it flow better and be "properly" capitalised and punctuated👇

Immediately, it's lost that Starface-y Gen Z vibe. The chattiness and laid back tone are almost completely gone because none of it was really coming from the copy itself, but from the way it was presented and formatted.

That's the power of having a typographical brand voice as well as a lexical (AKA wordy) brand voice.

How your brand can steal a few tricks from Starface's playbook

Here's where things get very interesting.

The older your average customer, the more likely they are to expect that your brand follow certain rules of grammar and punctuation.

For example, Baby Boomers read brands using the "proper" mechanics of language as a competence cue. That means sentence case, full stops, and no playful markers in serious contexts.

​In fact, there's evidence to suggest that older adults report lower confidence understanding emojis and tone cues. (Which is why age-related writing guides suggest conventional writing formats and structures for older audiences.)

On the flip side, younger audiences are the opposite. They read punctuation and grammar and other orthographical cues as tone. And are proven to be incredible adept at adjusting to even the most out-there tones of voices as long as they're used consistently.

Which, annoyingly, makes it very tricky for us to turn this into a hard-and-fast rule you can follow.

However, there is a mindset shift buried in all of this that improved our own copywriting significantly as we transitioned from students into copywriters: stop thinking of punctuation and spelling and grammar and capitalisation as something you can get right or wrong.

Forget what your GCSE English teacher drilled into you. Ignore those red squiggly lines in the Google Doc. Stop Googling "do I need to use an Oxford comma?"

Instead, think of your formatting and your typographical tone of voice as ways to underline the emotion you're aiming for.

In a way, choosing how to write a word or punctuate a sentence is closer to finding the right song for a reel on IG than it is submitting an English essay.

Now, are we saying that you can just throw out the entire rulebook of writing and go rogue? Absolutely not. When you want to be clear or convey a specific message clearly rather than a vibe, the rules of language absolutely still apply.

But for things like social media, emails, product descriptions or copy where the goal is to make a connection or build your brand? Audience-appropriate tone markers and clear "we're just like you" signals will beat rigid "proper writing" any day of the week.

The key is to match the way that you use your typographical tone of voice so that it feels familiar to your customer. That way, they feel immediately seen and receptive to your message.

And when we write how customers think and communicate, it makes our copy easier to process which makes customers more likely to like, trust and remember your brand.​

👋 Put this to work for your brand The easiest way to find out how your customers communicate and use punctuation, etc... is to find out where they hang out or write online. Think Reddit threads, Amazon reviews, IG captions, Facebook comments, TrustPilot reviews… You really want to find places where your customers are relaxed, unfiltered, and most likely to let their real voice through. Pro tip: we 🧡 starting on Reddit because it’s already split into tribes based on interest, so you can dive into subreddits for your niche and see how people talk when they’re ranting, raving, recommending stuff, hanging out… Then, just sit and absorb it. Immerse yourself in it. Look for unusual spellings, quirks of grammar, whether they use full stops or not, whether they write "lol" or use laughing emojis or go full deadpan with their humour... You can even copy and paste them into a document, upload it to ChatGPT and get it to break down the orthographical patterns that pop up again and again. 👆 And that’s the stuff you want to find. Those subtle formatting and spelling and capitalisation quirks that signal "we're one of you" to your customers when you use them. But remember, only use the ones that feel like a good fit for your brand. There's a thin line between being authentic and going full Buscemi... One last thing: this balance between being authentic and speaking your customers' language is a tricky thing to get right. We dug into a few tips and tricks a few weeks ago that might be helpful.​

That's all folks!

See you next week for more ways to do words gooder.

(Oh, and of course, if you need a hand doing your words gooder, we'd love to chat!)

Peace and love ✌️ Jack and Joe co-founders, co-brothers and co-pywriters at Do Words Good​