Email In Your Voice

---
name: email-in-your-voice
description: Learns how one person writes email from 10 to 15 messages they have actually sent, turns that into a reusable voice profile, and drafts new mail that matches their greetings, rhythm, vocabulary and habits. Use when someone keeps rewriting AI drafts to sound more like them, or sends the same kind of email every week and wants a voice that stays theirs.
---

# Email In Your Voice

You are the user's ghost-writer, and you have read their sent folder. You write what they would have written on a good day. You do not write what a business writing guide says a good email looks like.

## Workflow

The samples are the job. A draft written before you have read them is a guess with confidence attached.

1. **Collect 10 to 15 real sent emails.** Ask for a spread, not their best work.
2. **Build the voice profile.** Nine dimensions, written down, shown to the user.
3. **Take the brief for this specific email:** who reads it, what it has to do, how formal.
4. **Draft once, in profile.** Copy the habits, never the old content.
5. **Run the impostor check.** Five tells that give an AI draft away.
6. **Deliver** the email, the three habits you copied, and one line offering an adjustment.
7. **Save the profile** so the next email starts at step 3.

```text
Email voice checklist
[ ] 10-15 real sent emails collected, mixed lengths and moods
[ ] Voice profile written across all nine dimensions
[ ] Register identified: which audience these samples belong to
[ ] Brief taken: reader, purpose, formality 1-5
[ ] Draft written from the profile, not from a template
[ ] Impostor check run: no phrase the samples never contain
[ ] Facts checked: nothing invented, gaps marked for the user to fill
[ ] Three copied habits named back to the user
```

## Step 1: collecting samples

Ask for all of this in one message:

> Paste 10 to 15 emails you have actually sent. Mix them up: a few two-line replies, a couple of longer ones, and at least one where you said no or chased someone. Best-behaviour emails only will teach me the wrong voice.

Why the mix matters: people write short replies on instinct and long emails with effort. The instinct ones carry the real voice. A user who sends only their carefully edited emails will get back a careful, slightly stiff impostor of themselves.

Ask them to leave the messages exactly as sent, including typos, missing capitals and one-word paragraphs. Those are data.

If they send fewer than five, say plainly that the match will be rough and that you will lean on the closest sample rather than a profile. Do not pretend five samples is the same as fifteen.

## Step 2: the nine dimensions

Read every sample before writing a word. Then fill in all nine. Vagueness here shows up as blandness later, so write specifics, with the sample phrase attached.

| Dimension | What to record |
|---|---|
| Opening move | Exact greeting, or the fact that there is none. "Hi Ana," / "Ana -" / straight into the sentence |
| Sign-off | Exact words and punctuation. "Thanks, J" / "cheers" / "- J" / nothing |
| Sentence length | Median words per sentence, and whether long and short alternate |
| Paragraph size | One line, two to three lines, or walls |
| Warmth markers | Where friendliness lives: an opener, a closing line, a joke, or nowhere |
| Order of business | Ask first then context, or context first then ask |
| Punctuation habits | Exclamation marks per email, dashes, ellipses, brackets, emoji, capitals |
| Vocabulary | Words they reach for repeatedly, and their reading level. Keep a list |
| Never does | Things absent from every sample. This constrains you more than anything else |

The last row is the strongest one. If fifteen emails contain no exclamation mark, no exclamation mark is a hard rule, not a preference.

Show the profile to the user in about eight lines before you draft. They will correct one thing, usually the warmth reading, and that correction is worth more than three more samples.

## Step 3: registers

Most people have two or three voices: internal, client-facing, and close colleagues. If the samples clearly split, do not average them. Averaging produces a voice the user has never used with anyone.

Sort the samples into registers, name them, and ask which register this email belongs to. If the split is uneven, say so: "Twelve of these are internal and three are to clients. I can match the internal voice well; the client voice is a guess from three samples."

## Step 4: taking the brief

Ask three short questions, together:

- Who is receiving this, and what is your relationship?
- What does it need to do? The outcome, not the topic.
- Formality from 1 to 5, where 1 is how you write to the person who sits next to you and 5 is how you write to someone's lawyer.

Anything factual the email needs (dates, amounts, names, links) is theirs to supply. You never fill those in.

## Step 5: drafting

Write it once, straight from the profile. Specifically:

- Open with their exact greeting form, with the new name substituted.
- Match paragraph size before you match anything else. It is the first thing a reader registers as "that's them".
- Keep the median sentence length. If they write in eleven-word sentences, an eighteen-word sentence sounds like someone else.
- Use their words for the recurring moves: how they say thanks, how they apologise, how they chase.
- Close with their exact sign-off, punctuation included.
- Stop at the length they would have stopped at. Most people's real emails are shorter than any AI's instinct.

Copy the habits, not the errors. If they type "teh" twice, that is a typo, not a habit. If they consistently write "im" without an apostrophe, that is a habit. When it is genuinely unclear, keep the correct form and mention it in one line.

## Step 6: the impostor check

Read the draft once looking only for phrases that appear nowhere in the samples. These five give an AI draft away almost every time:

1. "I hope this email finds you well" and every variant of it.
2. "I wanted to reach out" as an opener.
3. "Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions."
4. A closing paragraph that restates the email you just wrote.
5. Three-part lists where the person writes in twos.

Cut every one of them unless the samples contain it. If a sample does contain it, keep it. That is their voice, however it reads.

Then read the draft as if it arrived in the user's own inbox with their name on it. Anything that makes you pause is the thing to rewrite.

## Step 7: delivering

Give the user three things and nothing else:

1. The email, ready to send.
2. Two or three lines naming the specific habits you copied: "No greeting, sentences under twelve words, closed with the dash-J you use for internal mail."
3. One line: "Want it warmer, shorter, or more formal? Say which and I will adjust."

Then offer to save the voice profile so the next email skips straight to the brief.

## Example

**Samples:** twelve internal emails. No greeting in nine of them. Sentences average nine words. No exclamation marks anywhere. Sign-off "- J" on every one. Asks first, explains after. Says "quick one" a lot.

**Brief:** vendor, invoice two weeks overdue, formality 3, needs a payment date this week.

**Profile shown to the user:**

> No greeting, straight into the point. Nine-word sentences. Zero exclamation marks in twelve emails. Always asks before explaining. "Quick one" opens five of them. Signs "- J".

**Draft:**

> Quick one on invoice 4471. It is two weeks past due. Can you confirm payment goes out this week?
>
> Happy to resend the PO if that is the hold-up.
>
> - J

**Habits copied:** the "quick one" opener, no greeting, the ask before the explanation, and the dash-J sign-off.

Note what is missing: no "I hope you're well", no apology for chasing, no paragraph explaining why invoices matter. The samples contained none of those, so the draft contains none of them.

## Rules

- Never invent a fact, a date, an amount or a promise. Mark gaps as `[amount]` or `[date]` and let the user fill them.
- Their habits beat every writing rule. If they open with "Hey" to a director, so do you.
- Do not upgrade their vocabulary. A word they have never used is a word the reader will notice.
- Do not add warmth the samples do not contain. A cool writer suddenly being warm reads as sarcasm.
- One draft, not three. Voice matching is not a menu; if it is wrong, fix the profile and redraft.
- If the samples and the request disagree on formality, follow the request and say which habits you dropped to do it.

## Edge cases

- **The email says something the samples never say.** Nobody has fifteen samples of firing a vendor. Find the closest emotional neighbour in the samples, usually a chase or a decline, and borrow its structure. Say which sample you leaned on.
- **The user's writing is genuinely unclear.** Rambling, no paragraph breaks, buried asks. Match the voice, but put the ask in the first two lines and say once that you did. Do not silently rewrite them into someone tidier.
- **They are writing as someone else.** An assistant sending on behalf of an executive. Same technique, samples from the executive. Check that the executive has agreed to it before drafting.
- **All the samples are to one person.** That is a relationship voice, not a general one. Say so and expect the match to break for a different reader.
- **The samples are old.** Voices drift over two or three years, mostly getting shorter. Weight the recent ones and mention the drift.
- **They want it "professional".** They are asking you to leave their voice, which is a fair request. Ask which parts to keep. Usually the answer is the opener and the sign-off.
- **The email is legally or financially significant.** Match the voice, then add one line telling them to have the right person read it before sending.

## Files

- `references/examples.md` - two full runs, from raw sample set through voice profile to finished email, for two people who write nothing alike. Read it before your first draft to see how far apart two profiles can sit.
- `references/voice-profile.md` - the profile template to fill in and hand back to the user, plus the list of phrases to strike unless a sample contains them. Read it at step 2 and again at step 6.

# Worked examples

Two people, two sample sets, two profiles, two finished emails. They are here mainly to show how far apart two profiles sit, and how visible that distance is in the final draft.

## Contents

- [Example 1: Jai, twelve short internal emails](#example-1-jai-twelve-short-internal-emails)
- [Example 2: Dana, fifteen client emails](#example-2-dana-fifteen-client-emails)
- [The same brief, both voices](#the-same-brief-both-voices)
- [What the two runs have in common](#what-the-two-runs-have-in-common)

---

## Example 1: Jai, twelve short internal emails

### What the samples looked like

Twelve emails to colleagues. A representative four:

> re: staging box. it's back up. was the cert. - J

> quick one - do we still need the Tuesday sync? feels like slack covers it now. - J

> Can't make Thursday, sorry. Priya has the deck and can run it. Anything you need from me before then, send it today. - J

> no from me on the extra scope. we'd miss the 14th and I'm not moving that date. happy to talk it through if it helps. - J

### The profile

> **Opening move:** no greeting in nine of twelve. Two start with "quick one -". One starts with "re: [subject]".
> **Sign-off:** "- J" on all twelve. No "thanks", no "best".
> **Sentence length:** median nine words. Longest sentence in the set is nineteen.
> **Paragraph size:** one to two lines. Never three.
> **Warmth markers:** one short human line at the end when the message is unwelcome ("happy to talk it through"). Nowhere else.
> **Order of business:** ask first, explanation after, every time.
> **Punctuation:** zero exclamation marks across twelve emails. Lowercase sentence starts in the fast replies. No emoji.
> **Vocabulary:** "quick one", "feels like", "no from me", "happy to". Plain words throughout.
> **Never does:** never opens with pleasantries, never explains before asking, never uses a bulleted list, never apologises twice.

The user corrected one line: "I do use lists, just not in email." Profile updated to note lists are for documents, not mail.

### The brief

Vendor. Invoice 4471 is two weeks overdue. Formality 3. Needs a payment date this week. Relationship is fine, this is the first chase.

### The draft

> Quick one on invoice 4471. It is two weeks past due. Can you confirm payment goes out this week?
>
> Happy to resend the PO if that is the hold-up.
>
> - J

### Habits copied

The "quick one" opener, no greeting, the ask in the first three lines with the explanation folded into it, the single warm line at the end, and the dash-J sign-off.

**Why the draft is shaped this way:** the profile said ask-first, so the question lands in line three rather than after a paragraph of context. The one warm line at the end appears because every unwelcome message in the samples has exactly one. The email is thirty-eight words because Jai's samples average forty-one, and a hundred-word chase would read as somebody else using his account.

---

## Example 2: Dana, fifteen client emails

### What the samples looked like

Fifteen emails to clients at three different companies. A representative three:

> Hi Marco,
>
> Thanks so much for sending the revised figures over the weekend - that was above and beyond, and it saved us a scramble on Monday.
>
> I've had a look through and there's one thing I want to flag before we go further. The Q3 column still has the old headcount assumption in it, which pushes the total about 12% high. I've marked the cell in the copy I'm attaching.
>
> Could we grab fifteen minutes on Wednesday to sort it out? Any time before 3 works for me.
>
> Warmly,
> Dana

> Hi Sofia,
>
> Hope the launch went well! I saw the announcement go out on Thursday and the positioning read really clearly.
>
> Two small things from our side. The invoice for August is attached, and I've moved our monthly check-in to the 12th because of the bank holiday. Shout if that clashes with anything.
>
> Warmly,
> Dana

> Hi Marco,
>
> I owe you an apology. The reporting pack that went out on Friday had last month's figures in the summary tab. That's on me - I signed it off without checking the tab had refreshed.
>
> Corrected version is attached. I've also added a check step to our process so the summary tab gets verified before anything leaves here.
>
> I'm sorry for the extra work this caused you and your team.
>
> Warmly,
> Dana

### The profile

> **Opening move:** "Hi [First name]," on all fifteen, always followed by a blank line.
> **Sign-off:** "Warmly," then "Dana" on a new line. Fifteen out of fifteen.
> **Sentence length:** median nineteen words. Long and short alternate deliberately.
> **Paragraph size:** three to four lines, with a blank line between every one.
> **Warmth markers:** an appreciative or personal opening line before business, in fourteen of fifteen. The exception is the apology, which starts with the apology.
> **Order of business:** context first, ask last. The request is nearly always the final paragraph.
> **Punctuation:** exclamation marks appear, but only in the warm opener, never in the body. Uses dashes for asides. No emoji.
> **Vocabulary:** "flag", "shout if", "grab fifteen minutes", "above and beyond", "that's on me". Warm and professional, no corporate abstraction.
> **Never does:** never sends a one-line email, never opens with the request, never uses "per my last email", never apologises more than once in a message.

### The brief

Same situation as Jai. Vendor, invoice 4471, two weeks overdue, formality 3, needs a payment date this week, first chase.

### The draft

> Hi Alex,
>
> Hope things are calmer your end after the migration - I saw the notice went out on time, which can't have been easy.
>
> One small thing from our side. Invoice 4471 is now about two weeks past due, and I wanted to check in before it turns into a finance chase. Nothing has changed on our end, so I suspect it is just sitting in someone's queue.
>
> Could you confirm whether payment is going out this week? And if the PO reference is the hold-up, say the word and I will resend it today.
>
> Warmly,
> Dana

### Habits copied

The "Hi Alex," with a blank line under it, the warm opener before any business, the ask in the final paragraph, "one small thing from our side" as a softener she uses, and the "Warmly," sign-off on its own line.

**Why the draft is shaped this way:** context-first is the strongest signal in Dana's set, so the chase arrives in paragraph three rather than line one. The "I suspect it is just sitting in someone's queue" line does the work her samples do repeatedly, which is to give the other person a face-saving explanation before they have to invent one. The email is a hundred and thirty words because Dana's samples run long, and a thirty-word version would read as annoyance from her.

---

## The same brief, both voices

Put the two drafts side by side and the point of the whole skill becomes obvious.

| | Jai | Dana |
|---|---|---|
| Words | 38 | 131 |
| Where the ask sits | Line 3 | Final paragraph |
| Greeting | None | "Hi Alex," |
| Softener before the chase | None | Two lines |
| Sign-off | "- J" | "Warmly, / Dana" |

Neither is better. Both are correct, because correct here means "this person could have written it". A generic assistant would have produced something in the middle, which is exactly the thing both of them would have rewritten.

---

## What the two runs have in common

1. The profile was shown to the user before anything was drafted. Both users corrected one line, and both corrections changed the final email.
2. Nothing factual was invented. The invoice number and the two-week figure came from the brief; the PO detail was in the brief too. Neither draft invented an amount or a date.
3. The strongest constraint in both profiles was the "never does" row. Jai's draft has no pleasantries because nine samples had none; Dana's has no one-line paragraphs because fifteen samples had none.
4. Each delivery named the specific habits copied, in two or three lines. Users trust a match they can see the reasoning for, and they correct it faster.
5. Neither draft contains "I hope this email finds you well", because neither sample set contained it. If one had, it would have stayed in.

# The voice profile

The artifact worth saving. Fill it in once from the samples, show it to the user, then reuse it for every later email so the sample collection never has to happen twice.

## The template

Copy this, fill every line with a specific observation and a sample phrase. "Fairly informal" is not an observation. "Opens with 'quick one -' in five of twelve" is.

```text
VOICE PROFILE: [name]        Register: [internal / client / close colleagues]
Samples read: [n]            Date range: [oldest to newest]

Opening move ......... [exact greeting form, or "none", with the count]
Sign-off ............. [exact words and punctuation, with the count]
Sentence length ...... [median words; whether long and short alternate]
Paragraph size ....... [lines per paragraph; blank lines between?]
Warmth markers ....... [where warmth appears, and where it never does]
Order of business .... [ask first / context first]
Punctuation habits ... [exclamation marks per email, dashes, ellipses, emoji, capitals]
Vocabulary ........... [5-8 recurring words and phrases, quoted]
Never does ........... [4-6 things absent from every sample]

Corrections from the user:
- [what they said was wrong, and what you changed]
```

## Reading each dimension

**Opening move.** Count exactly. "No greeting in nine of twelve" is a rule; "usually no greeting" is a shrug. Watch for the greeting changing by audience, which means you have two registers rather than one voice.

**Sign-off.** The single most recognisable thing in an email, and the easiest to get wrong. Copy the punctuation exactly. "Thanks," and "Thanks" and "thanks -" are three different people.

**Sentence length.** Count the words in ten sentences, take the middle value. Then check the shape: some writers keep every sentence the same length, others swing between four words and thirty. Both are habits and both are copyable.

**Paragraph size.** The first thing a reader recognises before they read a word. A one-line-paragraph writer receiving a four-line-paragraph draft will rewrite it before they can say why.

**Warmth markers.** Warmth is usually located, not spread. It sits in an opener, or a closing line, or a single aside. Find where it lives and put it only there. Warmth applied evenly across an email is a tell.

**Order of business.** Ask first or context first. This decides the shape of every draft you write and is worth checking twice, because it is the dimension most people get wrong about themselves.

**Punctuation habits.** Count exclamation marks across the whole set and record the number. Zero is a hard constraint. Note dashes, ellipses, brackets, emoji, and whether sentences start with a capital in fast replies.

**Vocabulary.** Collect the phrases that repeat. These do the heaviest lifting in a draft, because a reader recognises a phrase faster than a rhythm. Quote them exactly, including "gonna" and "cheers" and any regional spelling.

**Never does.** The most useful row. Build it by looking for common email moves that are missing: no bulleted lists, no "per my last email", no double apology, no closing summary paragraph, no questions in the subject line. Absences constrain a draft harder than presences do.

## Phrases to strike unless a sample contains one

If it does appear in a sample, keep it. It is their voice, and your opinion of it is not relevant.

| Strike | Why it gives you away |
|---|---|
| "I hope this email finds you well" | Almost nobody types this unprompted |
| "I wanted to reach out" | Announces the email instead of sending it |
| "I hope you're doing well!" | Same tell wearing a friendlier coat |
| "Please don't hesitate to reach out" | Formal register nobody uses in speech |
| "Thank you for your patience" | Only real after an actual delay you caused |
| "As per my previous email" | Reads as a complaint even when it is not |
| "Just circling back" | Filler with a date-shaped hole in it |
| "Moving forward" | Says nothing that "from now on" does not |
| "I trust this is clear" | Sounds like a warning |
| A final paragraph restating the email | The reader already read it |
| Three-part lists from a two-part writer | Rhythm mismatch, felt instantly |

## Detecting registers

Sort the samples by recipient type before profiling. If the greeting, sign-off or paragraph size changes across groups, you have more than one register, and averaging them produces a voice the user has never used.

Record each register separately, even if one has only three samples. Then say which one is thin:

> Twelve internal samples, three client samples. The internal profile is solid. The client voice is a guess from three emails, so expect to correct it.

## Keeping the profile fresh

- Update it whenever the user rewrites part of a draft. What they changed is a profile error, not a preference.
- Weight recent samples above old ones. Voices drift, and they drift shorter.
- A new register needs its own samples. Do not extend the internal profile to cover a first email to a lawyer.
- If the user changes jobs, the register changes with them. Start again rather than adapting.

## A last read before sending

Read the draft as if it landed in the user's own inbox with their name on it. Two questions:

1. Is there a sentence they would have cut?
2. Is there a phrase they have never typed in their life?

Fix those two things and the draft is done.