YSM Voice & Tone
YSM’s voice reflects the School’s academic mission, commitment to discovery, and role as a leader in research, education, and clinical excellence. It balances authority with accessibility, emphasizing clarity, credibility, and purpose. YSM communications should convey intellectual rigor, curiosity, and collaboration—while remaining approachable and human. Tone may shift depending on context (e.g., internal vs. external, celebratory vs. explanatory), but the underlying voice remains consistent.
Writers and editors can evaluate content against the traits and characteristics below to make sure a piece of content fulfills each of them. In this way, these function as a checklist, ensuring that the voice of the site is realized and consistent.
| TRAITS | CHARACTERISTICS |
|---|---|
| • Meet readers where they are • Be clear and confident • Showcase faculty and their work • Emphasize impact • Trumpet YSM's unique contributions • Target a grade 12 reading level | • Authoritative, not arrogant • Precise and scientifically accurate, yet accessible • Engaging and stimulating, inviting reflection and curiosity • Crisp, clean, and confident • Insightful and forward-thinking |
The examples below bring YSM’s voice and tone principles into practical, real-world use. They illustrate how to apply the guidelines across common academic, research, and institutional content, helping ensure communications are clear, credible, and aligned with the School’s mission. Here are some quick tips:
- Assume your reader is intellectually curious but not necessarily a PhD-level scientist.
- Explain concepts clearly without “dumbing down” the science.
- Avoid jargon unless it is essential and explain it when it’s used.
- Present new ideas in context, with confidence and grounded in evidence.
- Signal Yale’s leadership through our accomplishments and tone.
Our Voice is Confident
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The digital voice is authoritative, scientifically accurate, and assured. It is not condescending or arrogant. It’s our job to convey our contributions in a manner that is informative, trustworthy, and provides contextual insight. We want our readers to understand the impact of our work and the expertise of our faculty, and to view our content as a reliable representation of that work.
| BEFORE | AFTER | WHY |
|---|---|---|
| The disorder now has a name and description. | A disorder that was poorly understood is now named and defined, giving those affected by it much-needed answers and researchers a clearer route to treatment development. | Emphasize the broader impact when possible. Don’t just say what a finding is. Say what a finding—what our work—means for people. |
| The institute aims to build connections. | Through its core facilities, collaborative workspaces, and intentional community-building, the institute brings its researchers together to facilitate connection and collaboration. | Avoid suggesting we’re trying to do something we are actively doing. How are we doing it? Why are we doing it? These details demonstrate the intention behind the work we do at YSM. |
| The findings may inform potential new treatments in the future. | The findings may offer researchers new strategies for developing treatments. | We do not want to overpromise, but we also don’t want to diminish our contributions or undermine our message. Responsible hedging is good, but here, three words are used to hedge—may, potential, and future—diluting the impact of the work. |
Our Voice is Insightful
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Through crisp, discerning, forward-thinking content, we convey that at YSM we are working to solve current challenges and improve the world. We are a world-class academic medical institution, our faculty are leaders in their fields, and we advance discovery and innovation with local, national, and global impact
| EXAMPLES |
|---|
| “These are patients with complicated needs; by convening different disciplines and all of us putting our heads together, patients get everything they need.” |
| At the inaugural Envisioning AI at Yale symposium, it was more than a thought experiment—it was the foundation of a university-wide endeavor to shape the future of artificial intelligence and help guide society through rapid technological change. |
| Yale has been one of the leading institutions for rare disease research for almost half a century. |
| He envisions a future where AI helps, say, predict how a tumor might respond to a drug or whether it will metastasize. “My personal hope is that by using the data we have at Yale, we can develop digital biomarkers that will change the practice of pathology.” |
Our Voice is Engaging
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While accuracy is essential, we also want to be accessible. Our content, therefore, must meet people where they are, avoiding jargon and technical language that might alienate our audience. Instead, opt for non-technical language and descriptions. The goal is to bring the reader along on a learning journey; our language should be inviting and stimulating, evoking reflection and curiosity. When opportunities allow, humanize the people we feature, to better build the connection with our readers and our experts.
| BEFORE | AFTER | WHY |
|---|---|---|
| A Phase I trial measures safety and pharmacokinetics. | A Phase I trial evaluates safety and pharmacokinetics, or how the body interacts with the drug. | Many people may not know what pharmacokinetics means. Using jargon hinders our ability to convey our message. |
| She’s constructing neural networks to see if they recapitulate the spatio-temporal dynamics of human brain function. | She’s building complex models of brain functions to see if they offer insight into how the actual brain might be working. | Simple, clear language is more effective. |
| Lysosomes contain hydrolytic enzymes that degrade macromolecules in the cell. | Lysosomes serve as the garbage cans of the cell, accumulating and breaking down waste products and recycling their components. | Swapping jargon for a simple metaphor can aid understanding of complex topics. |
| Example: But this idea didn’t sit right with the two senior authors of the study. Both Wang and Eisenstein had young children who were relatively new to solid food around the time they initiated the study. “Anna and I had chatted about this concept and agreed that, generally, our kids didn’t like to smear food on inflamed and damaged skin because it hurts,” Wang said. “So, the three of us wondered if there were other ways that the immune system could ‘remember’ something you ate as being dangerous, a possibility which people may have overlooked.” | Personal moments like this convey that our experts are people too, which allows our readers to connect with them on another level. | |