Voice is the distinct personality or style of a piece of writing. Think of it as how you say what you want to say. When thinking about voice, it is helpful to consider how we speak. When you’re talking to someone, you can use your tone of voice to get your point across the way you want to. You may be angry, sad, or happy for example. The words you use and your tone of voice help to convey that to the person you’re speaking to.

The same thing happens when we write. The words we use help to give our writing its style and to get our message across to our audience the way we want to. For example, we can use different verbs or adjectives to change the tone of our writing. For an example, let's think about the sentence "Smith's argument sucked." When you read that, it is very clear that the author disagrees and that they didn't like the argument that was presented. The person seems to be upset or angry in some way because they are using the verb "sucked," which reads as very aggressive. Instead, they could say that "Smith's argument was weak because of its lack of evidence." In this sentence, we not only have a clearer understanding of why the person did not like the argument, but we also have a more analytical and less aggressive tone which may compel the audience to read forward.