Most of this content was taken from Lightstep Voice & Tone Guidelines

The voice and tone used in our content is important in establishing our brand. The more cohesive we can be across deliverables, the more the public will recognize Lightstep.

TLDR; What you need to know about voice and tone

I added this section cause I’m pretty sure not many will slog through everything to find what they need.

The rest of this guideline provides the “why” for our voice and tone, along with examples of using our voice and tone correctly. Read this section to quickly understand where voice and tone are important and how to use it in specific deliverables.

Voice

Our voice is a natural extension of our personality. It’s the way we speak—the traits, quirks and habits that make us sound like us.

Our voice characteristics:

• Smart: We display balance of academic intellect and practical instincts.
• Collaborative: We humbly celebrate our customers’ successes over our own and avoid standing at the center of the spotlight.
• Confident: We speak deliberately and directly.
• Visionary: We feel genuinely inspired by the work we do, and we share that passion and focus.
• Delightful: We are lighthearted and genuinely friendly, we infuse our writing with warmth.

Tone

While our voice doesn’t change, our tone should shift depending on what we’re saying, who we’re saying it to and where we’re saying it. Read the room and adjust your tone accordingly.

Deliverable	Tone
Website	Add
Blog posts	Add
Emails	Add
Social media	Add
Docs (OTel & LP)	Concise, informative, non-sensational
Feature discovery	Relatable, informative, concise
Error messages	Unalarming, informative,
Warnings/cautions	Authoritative, informative
Info messages	Add
Success messages	Congratulatory, happy

Quick guidelines

Here are some quick guidelines you should always follow. You can find more comprehensive grammar/style guidelines hereLink to grammar list

Use active voice Use an active voice: the subject does the action vs having the action done to it.

• Yes: Our customers use Lightstep to reduce MTTR
• No: Our customers have reduced MTTR by using Lightstep

Make positive statements Avoid using negatives and derogatory language.

• Yes: We collect 100% of the performance data, 100% of the time
• No: We don’t do any upfront sampling

Avoid slang and technical jargon As a guide, we want to use precise, accurate, technical language but always use the simplest words to explain your point.

• No: Customer POV (for a case study)
• No: A metric is essentially a “dot” of data – e.g., statsd.increment (“api.requests”) is the statsd command to increase the “api.requests” metric by one. Newer time series data stores try to approximate the context of an event with tags or dimensions. (Why Honeycomb page)

Avoid transitions that will make the copy seem stilted or overly formal

• Yes: That said; plus; also
• No: Nevertheless; however; heretofore

Avoid placeholder phrases like “please note,” “in order,” and “at this time

Avoid funny lines that aren’t closely related to the topic, that require a lot of off-topic verbiage, or that obscure information

Be polite and respectful but don’t overdo it

• Yes: To learn more, click here.
• No: To learn more, please click here.

Be friendly and enthusiastic, but not silly

Use contractions, but not Latin abbreviations (e.g.)

• Yes: If you can’t access…
• Yes: Parent tags show a causal relationship between spans (for example, between the client and server sides of a remote call).
• No: If you cannot access…
• No: Parent tags show a causal relationship between spans (e.g., between the client and server sides of a remote call).

Use emoji, exclamation points, and interjections sparingly

Be helpful and informative, but not pedantic or academic

Offer advice using “you” rather than “we”

• Yes: You can add spans to your application in just a few minutes.
• No: We’ll add spans to your application in just a few minutes.

Use inclusive language

• Don’t use phrases or examples that denigrate or insult any group of people.
• Use gender neutral terms in headlines and copy.
  • Yes: How to Become a Superhero
  • No: How to Become Iron Man
• If the subject’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, use “they,” “them,” and “their” as a singular pronoun. Don’t use “one” or “he or she” as a pronoun.
  • Yes: A DevOps manager can pinpoint the root cause quickly. They can identify issues and resolve them before their customers are even aware there was a problem.
• Or avoid a pronoun altogether and see Chicago Manual of Style’s Nine techniques for achieving gender neutrality

Brand Foundation

Does this section belong here? Is it needed?

Our Mission

To clear the way for developers to build a better future.

Our Story

Developers today have a job unlike any other. They build products that reach billions of people. They create functionality that can change human behavior. They develop features that fuel entire businesses. And those businesses fuel entire economies.

Virtually every aspect of modern life is built on a layer of code. And if it isn’t today, it will be tomorrow. Developers are no longer just moving fast and breaking things.

They’re building the future.

But their tools haven’t kept up, which leaves them battling impossible odds. Managing unwieldy dashboards. Bogged down by administrative tasks. Fighting fires. Losing focus.

At Lightstep, we know that there’s a better way.

Where complex doesn’t mean precarious. And problems can be solved proactively. Where productivity tools aren’t just another distraction. And developers aren’t afraid to push code on Fridays.

Because work shouldn’t always feel like this much work.

Lightstep gives developers big picture clarity. Down to the smallest details. So that everyone knows what’s happening and why. We help teams communicate with ease. And developers focus on what really matters. So they can build products that people love. Push code faster. And push the world forward.

Our Audience

I don’t think this is still true?

Our primary target is the developer.

We target developers who have a growth mindset; they recognize the flaws with the current system and are open-minded about the possibility that there could be a better way. They are fierce champions of the products they love and are able to advocate within their companies for change.

Our secondary target is the buyer.

Our buyers respond well to case studies and customer stories as signals of prior success. But they’re not just looking for a proof of concept, they’re looking for proof of value. Before they make a purchase decision, they look to the developers on their team for input.

Editorial principles

Our editorial principles are our golden rules for writing. Check yourself against each of these principles to be sure that we’re living up to our company values with every piece of content we create.

Align to purpose

Just as we act with a purpose in mind, everything we write should begin with an explicit goal. This keeps our writing focused on our audience and prevents us from creating content for the sake of it—even for SEO.

Be a multiplier

We write to empower our users, first and foremost. Our writing should help users learn what they need to know and accomplish what they are working toward. We love playful copy, but clarity is always king.

Cultivate trust

Trustworthy writing takes work and that starts with a foundation of radical candor. Before we write anything, we do our homework. We make sure that everything we write is both factual and honest. We say what we mean and don’t beat around the bush—especially when the subject matter is challenging or uncomfortable.

Take your work seriously without taking yourself (too) seriously

Observability can be a weighty subject, so we make a point of livening things up. We go out of our way to create content that makes people smile because at the end of the day, that’s what this stuff is all about.

Brand Voice and Messaging

Voice

Our voice is a natural extension of our personality. It’s the way we speak—the traits, quirks and habits that make us sound like us.

Tone

While our voice doesn’t change, our tone should shift depending on what we’re saying, who we’re saying it to and where we’re saying it. Read the room and adjust your tone accordingly.

Messaging

Our messaging is what we choose to say with our brand voice. This guide includes sample copy and key stories we tell about Lightstep.

Voice characteristics

Smart

Also means: intelligent, clever, thoughtful

Smart writing balances academic intellect and practical instincts. We love to share data-driven insights, and always make sure to contextualize statistics with thoughtful interpretation. We strive for elegance, distilling complex concepts into clear and concise copy.

Ask yourself

• Is this well informed and considered from all angles?
• Am I explaining concepts fully and simply?
• Have I removed jargon?

This sounds like

• Lightstep surfaces statistical correlations between a system’s behavior and its dependent services. That way, developers can investigate the most likely cause of their issue, first.

This doesn’t sound like

• With unlimited cardinality and a high-fidelity dataset uncompromised by head or tail sampling, Correlations reveals issues unavailable to conventional monitoring solutions.
• We can unlock the secrets in your data.

When in doubt

• Keep researching! Make sure you understand the content backwards and forwards.
• Strip out any vague language that may have snuck its way in. Be direct. Say what you mean.
• Share your writing with someone who knows less about your subject. Revise until your reader doesn’t have any more questions.
• Write in plain English. If you do need to use a technical term, offer a brief definition or link out to more information on the subject.

Collaborative

Also means: helpful, open, supportive

Collaborative writing puts everyone on the same team. We humbly celebrate our customers’ successes over our own and avoid standing at the center of the spotlight. We share stories that inspire and ideas that can push the field forward for everyone.

Ask yourself

• Am I giving credit where credit is due?
• Is the information I’ve provided helpful and/or new?
• Are there opportunities here to celebrate the achievements of our customers or partners?

This sounds like

• Together with teams at Google, Microsoft and many others, we are working to develop OpenTelemetry: a single, unified source for portable instrumentation.
• InVision improved their app performance by 75% in under a year.

This doesn’t sound like

• Using Lightstep, Invision solved their app performance issues.
• Our team at Lightstep created distributed tracing and founded OpenTracing.

When in doubt

• Use a quote or share a story to illustrate your point.
• Lead with the customer before bringing Lightstep into the conversation.

Confident

Also means: composed, empowering, self-assured

In a space where fire-fighting is the norm, we are always at ease. We speak deliberately and directly—a steady hand in an always-changing industry. Our voice is action-oriented and powerful, helping our users chart a clear path forward.

Ask yourself

• Does this stand out?
• Am I being direct?
• Am I building a sense of momentum?

This sounds like

• Find flaws faster.
• Take back your Fridays.

This doesn’t sound like

• Deployments may be rolled back in the case that something goes wrong.

When in doubt

• Shorten your sentences. This creates a punchy rhythm that’s packed with energy.
• Remove modifiers that aren’t critical for comprehension. Look for unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.
• Imagine your sentence in a banner ad. If you wouldn’t give it a second look, try again.

Visionary

Also means: inspiring, focused, insightful

We feel genuinely inspired by the work we do, and we share that passion and focus with the world around us. We proactively share new ideas and insights with our readers. We are proudly opinionated and don’t shy away from taking a strong stance.

Ask yourself

• Have I given the reader an understanding of the bigger picture?
• Does this content inspire the reader to take action?

This sounds like

• Distributed tracing allows developers to navigate their systems with unprecedented precision.
• We are in the midst of a massive architectural transformation in the software industry. We created Lightstep to accelerate this shift and help developers bring better products to people, faster.

This doesn’t sound like

• Tracing is the future.

When in doubt:

• Make sure you’re using the active voice. Look for words like “was,” “been” and “by.”

Delightful

Also means: friendly, surprising, refreshing

Refreshingly lighthearted and genuinely friendly, we infuse our writing with warmth. We write with a smile and look for unique places to truly connect with our audience. We strike a delicate balance though, favoring subtle winks to all-out jokes and never sacrificing clarity for cleverness.

Ask yourself

• Does this sound like a real person would say it?
• Can we give a subtle wink to the reader with this copy?

This sounds like

• Lightstep helps you quickly identify what’s happening and why.
• Guess less. Surface the root cause with Lightstep.

This doesn’t sound like

• Achieve your business objectives and define SLAs for fine-grained, custom criteria.

When in doubt

• Read your sentence out loud. If something sounds off to you, it’s going to sound off to your reader.
• Don’t force it. There’s a time and place for delight.

Brand Messaging

Tagline

Simple observability for deep systems

Elevator pitch [WIP]

Was this ever decided?

Lightstep is…

Origin story [WIP]

Is this needed?

Our founding team witnessed the birth of microservices at Google. That experience guides our understanding of their benefits, and it also informs our understanding of their risks and pitfalls. We created Lightstep because we understand the massive architectural transformation underway in the software industry, and we saw an opportunity to accelerate it, all while improving the quality of the developer and end-user experience. While we learned a great deal from our experiences building Dapper (Google’s distributed tracing solution) and Monarch (Google’s high-availability metrics solution), Lightstep is in many ways a reaction to and a generational improvement beyond those approaches. Our story as individuals and as a company revolves around continuous learning, careful listening, and the belief that these fundamentally new software architectures require fundamentally new solutions.