Most brand owners know when their copy is off. They just can't say why.
It reads fine. The information is there. But something about it feels borrowed. A little too polished. A little too generic. Like it could belong to anyone, which means it belongs to no one.
That feeling is your brand voice trying to tell you something. The problem is it doesn't come with a label.
Brand voice isn't about style. It's about signal.
When someone reads your copy, they're picking up on dozens of signals at once. Are you formal or relaxed? Bold or measured? Warm or authoritative? Funny or straight? Most brands drift across these spectrums without realizing it, sometimes within the same paragraph. The result is copy that feels inconsistent even when the words are technically fine.
The solution isn't to write better. It's to know where you actually land, so you can make intentional choices instead of accidental ones.
That's what Dialect does.
Dialect is a free brand voice grader I built specifically for this problem. You paste in any piece of copy — a website paragraph, an email, a social caption, anything that represents how your brand talks — and it scores you across seven spectrums that actually shape how your voice reads.
Playfulness. Formality. Confidence. Warmth. Complexity. Humanity. Wit.
Each one gets its own dial. Each dial shows you exactly where your copy landed.
But here's the part that matters: Dialect doesn't just grade your copy. It coaches it.
The needle moves. So do the tips.
Under each dial is a tuning slider. Drag it toward where you want to be, and Dialect gives you specific, actionable tips for getting there. Not "add more personality." More like: "Start a sentence with 'And' or 'But.' It signals you're talking, not presenting."
The difference is real. Vague feedback sends you back to the blank page with nothing. Specific moves give you something to actually do.
This is what most brand voice audits miss. They tell you what your voice is. They don't tell you what to change or how to change it. Dialect does both, in about the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
Who it's for
Dialect was built for brand owners and marketers who write their own copy and have a nagging sense that something isn't landing right. You don't need a copywriter on retainer to use it. You don't need to know anything about brand voice theory. You just need a paragraph and a few minutes.
It's also useful if you're briefing someone else to write for your brand. Pasting in a sample and walking through the dials together is a faster way to align on voice than any brief I've ever seen. You show them where you are. You show them where you want to be. The gaps become obvious.
Why I built it
I've been working in brand voice for over 20 years. The question I hear most often isn't "what is brand voice?" People understand the concept. The question is always some version of: "How do I know if mine is working?"
The honest answer used to be: you hire someone like me and we figure it out together. That's still true for brands ready to do the deeper work. But a lot of people need a starting point first. Something that makes the abstract concrete, that turns "our voice feels off" into "our voice scores high on Formality and low on Confidence, and here's what that means."
Dialect is that starting point. It's free, it takes five minutes, and it gives you something specific to work with instead of a feeling you can't quite name.
If you're ready to go further after that, let's talk. Or try Dialect now and see where your copy lands.