Version 3.0 · latest

Voice

The Voice category of a style guide. Four sliders, each 0–10, that control how your articles sound at the sentence level. Voice (together with Context) is applied in Phase 4 of the article workflow to shape title and thesis.

The four sliders

Slider	0	10	Controls
Tone	Casual	Professional	How formal the writing is.
Humor	Serious	Playful	How much wit and levity Cody uses.
Opinion	Balanced	Opinionated	How strong the viewpoint is.
Technical	Less	More	Depth of technical detail and jargon.

All four are integers 0–10. There is no neutral or default — every style guide picks an explicit value for each.

Tone

0 = Casual, conversational. 10 = Professional, formal.

Low (0–3): contractions, second person, casual transitions (“anyway”), short fragments for rhythm. Reads like a chat message or a blog post.
Mid (4–6): clean prose, occasional contractions, mix of full and partial sentences. Reads like an industry blog post.
High (7–10): no contractions, full sentences, third person or impersonal, formal transitions (“furthermore”, “however”). Reads like a white paper or industry journal.

Humor

0 = Serious, straightforward. 10 = Playful, witty.

Low (0–3): no jokes, no asides, no parenthetical winks. The piece focuses on its argument.
Mid (4–6): occasional dry humor, an aside per few sections, the rare turn of phrase that gets a smile.
High (7–10): persistent wit, callbacks, intentional comedic structure. Suitable for personal newsletters, opinion columns, satirical pieces.

Note: In Cody Article Writer v3.0+, the humor slider direction was reversed for consistency with the other voice sliders (higher = more of the named quality). Pre-v3.0 style guides are auto-migrated.

Opinion

0 = Balanced, presenting multiple sides. 10 = Opinionated, clear stance.

Low (0–3): neutral framing, “on one hand / on the other”, explicit acknowledgment of counter-arguments, recommendations hedged.
Mid (4–6): clear position with acknowledgment of trade-offs. Recommendations made with caveats.
High (7–10): direct claims, minimal hedging, strong recommendations. The piece argues, it doesn’t just inform.

Technical

0 = Accessible to all. 10 = Technical depth assumed.

Low (0–3): jargon explained, analogies used, no assumed prior knowledge. Suitable for cross-disciplinary or executive audiences.
Mid (4–6): some jargon used unexplained where the audience is expected to know it, others defined. Standard industry vocabulary assumed.
High (7–10): deep jargon, no definitions, formula notation, references to specific tools/frameworks/algorithms without context. Suitable for practitioner audiences.

How voice is applied

In Phase 4 (Title & Thesis), Cody reads your voice settings before generating any title or thesis options. The four sliders inform:

Title — formality (Tone), playfulness (Humor), assertiveness (Opinion).
Thesis claim strength — how directly the thesis takes a position (Opinion), how much it explains vs. asserts (Technical).
Audience framing — works together with Context settings.

Voice doesn’t directly shape the outline (that’s Structure) or the prose-level texture (that’s Formatting). But the voice baked into the thesis carries forward — Cody won’t generate a casual, joke-filled section under a thesis it just wrote in formal academic language.

What’s stored

{
  "voice": {
    "tone": 7,
    "humor": 3,
    "opinion": 8,
    "technical": 5
  }
}

All four fields are required. Values must be integers 0–10 inclusive.

Picking values

A few combinations that work:

Style purpose	Tone	Humor	Opinion	Technical
Thought leadership for executives	7	3	8	5
Technical tutorial for developers	4	2	4	9
Conversational newsletter	2	6	7	3
Industry essay (general audience)	6	4	7	4
Internal documentation	5	0	2	7

These are starting points, not prescriptions. Iterate on the style as you write — most styles need a few articles of use before the values feel right.

Context — co-applied at Phase 4 (title & thesis).
Style Guides Overview — how voice fits into the full style guide.