23 November 2009
The words we write and speak say as much about your company as the visuals we create. The two go hand in hand to create the complete picture. Your personality determines the voice and tone that runs through all of your communications. Human. Clarity. Confidence. Honest. Responsive. Integrity. The following guidelines are designed to help you achieve a voice and tone consistent with your brand.

Introduction

Voice and Tone
An approachable, straightforward and confident tone best describes the personality we want to express.

Human
Write in a direct, conversational style. Use crisp, active sentences to give more life to the written word.

Clarity
Use minimum amount of jargon and colloquialisms to make your writing easy to understand and read.

Confidence
Write confidently about products and services.

Honest
Stick to the facts. You probably have a strong enough story to tell and high quality products and services that can be written about without bragging or being dishonest.

Responsive
Write to the reader. Tailor your words to your audience. Don’t overuse acronyms, jargon or colloquialisms.

Integrity
Respond to your opportunities and challenges honestly, with confidence, and with respect for your customers, partners, suppliers, yourselves and others.

In summary, write simple and direct prose, stressing your brand attributes and personality.

Appropriate Use of Language and Graphic Elements

A philosophy of customer focus and dedication extends to a direct relationship with your customers through your marketing, advertising, documentation, web sites and other written materials. The goal is to develop and deliver high quality communications and documentation to your chosen markets that are effective, persuasive and instructive without being offensive.

E-terms, I-terms

The use of e-terms is increasing rapidly. The “e” stands for “electronic” and should only modify real and meaningful terms, such as “e-publishing” and “e-marketing”. The “e” should not be used to create artificial words such as “e-nable” or “e-mpower”.

Always use e- with a hyphen. Capitalise E when it appears at the beginning of a sentence of bullet. Use lower-case e in all other instances.

Because your market positioning is closely tied to the Internet, you do not want to make the term “Internet” generic. Therefore, do not use “I” words, like “i-commerce”, “i-marketing”, “i-solutions”.

When you have specific products that you want to associate with the benefits of Internet technology, use the full term Internet – e.g. Internet Business Solutions, or HotScot Internet Access.

Corporate Naming Guidelines

Your company name can be written in two ways: a short name and a legal name. In your case the short name is “Hotscot”. This should always be written as one word with a capitalised “H” The legal name is “Creative Magma Limited”. This should be written as such in full.

Contact Addresses

These should always be written as such with no spaces or capitalisation. Links to sub-pages should never be given out. Although alternative .co.uk .net and .com addresses are available and operational. This is important for generating links, preventing dead links in the future and strengthening of the brands.

When providing a contact email address to customers you should always use your first name then @ followed by the domain name for example: robert@hotscot.net

The company telephone number should be written as 01397 700 924. This number should be written as such with the two spaces for clarity. Rearranging the spaces can be confusing and this is the most commonly used spacing method for non-metropolitan telephone codes in the UK. Do not use brackets or international dialling codes such as 00 44. This only works in Europe and if the phone number is to be given to an international customer it should be written as +44 1397 700 924. This is the international standard and can be dialled as such from mobile and digital communication devices or by placing the international exit code in place of the + on traditional telephone networks.

The company address should be written in full as in the following example:

Suite 3
North Road
Fort William
Inverness-shire
PH33 6PP

The lines and spaces are to be as above with the word Road rather than Rd. and the postal region included.

Word Usage

Terms, acronyms, abbreviations should be used carefully. Slang and dialect should be avoided at all times. Spelling and good grammar should always be correct.

Trademark and Copyright Policies

Your name and logo are examples of trademarks and are valuable assets. Your reputation for providing the highest-quality products and services is embroiled in your trademarks and copyrighted materials. Please adhere to these policies and guidelines for protecting all of your trademarks and copyrighted materials.

Defining Trademarks and Copyrights

Trademarks

Trademarks are names, symbols, or graphical devices used in identifying and distinguishing a product, service, program, or project. A trademark owner has the exclusive right to use its trademarks and is entitled to prevent others from using its trademarks inappropriately.

Copyrights

A copyright is the right owned by every author of a work to exclude others from doing any of the following five activities in connection with the work: (1) reproduction; (2) adaptation; (3) distribution to the public; (4) performance in public; or (5) display in public. Copyright protection exists from the moment of creation and fixation for all original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.

When writing a copyright, it should be at the end of the document and be written with the copyright symbol followed by the full legal name and the date the copyright extends to. “© Copyright Hotscot 2002 - 2009”

Service Marks, Slogans, and Taglines

A slogan is a special type of trademark that may also be referred to as a registered or unregistered service mark. Because it appears as a complete phrase or sentence, a slogan is often easy to misuse. Slogans are valuable corporate properties. To protect your investment in these slogans and maintain their value, it is important that you follow these rules when creating any materials that use your slogans.

Service marks should be indicated by a SM symbol. An example would include “Booking for tomorrow – Here today! SM”.

Trademark and Copyright Listing

Only those trademarks that are designated as registered should use the ® symbol. All other trademarks should use the TM symbol. Service marks are denoted with the SM symbol. These symbols are placed to the right of the trademark on the first use of the mark within text. These symbols should appear along with the text or included in a legal notice section of the material. For example when mentioning the company name it should be written as “HotScot ™” and at the end of a document the standard corporate copyright notice should be given as:

© Creative Magma Limited
Registered in Scotland Number SC1234567

Suite 3
North Road
Fort William
Inverness-shire
PH33 6PP
business@hotscot.net

All Rights Reserved

™ Hotscot is a trademark of Creative Magma Limited

Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or services marks or others.