What a weird article passing it off as ânewsâ that Tone of Voice has been there since the beginning of time, and as far as I can see no recent amendments.
I think it is a good idea to not use phrases such as âelephant in the roomâ - as the article states, it might not be understood by people who are not familiar with the term.
But âblacklistâ and âwhitelistâ I donât see a problem with using (depending on the context), as far as I am aware historically it has nothing to do with race.
Nor addressing a mixed sex group of people as âguysâ. Has anyone ever been offended by that (serious question)?
Yep. I generally refuse to reply to anything addressed to guys
I do dislike âguysâ whatever happened to ladies and gentlemen ⊠I am the older generation though so am probably wrong lol
Yes, I would agree with that. Even âLadies and Gentsâ would be better than âguysâ, but I donât see why it is offensive. I believe over the passing decades it has become more and more gender neutral IMO.
It has⊠my female colleagues use it to refer to each other all the time.
Meanings of words change over time.
I use guys as a gender neutral term, and I find it quite commonly used like that too.
âYou guysâ fixes a bug in the English language in that it doesnât have an official second-person plural pronoun like âustedesâ in Spanish or âäœ ä»Źâ in Chinese. (Unless you live somewhere where you can say yâall)
I use âfolksâ as a reasonable workaround 
You is the official second-person plural pronoun. Thou or thee is the official second-person singular pronoun. 
If we could all just speak proper English, this wouldnât be a problem.[/sarcasm]
Iâll just stick with âOi you lotâ 
Anyone else think they should just ask you how you want to be addressed etc.
To me that means parents.
So me being me I just did a diff and yep its 99% the same content thats existed for years.
Itâs a lazy Twitter inspired âNewsâ article.
So either Monzo are lying, or they have just not updated the external version on the website yet. My money is on the latter
I must admit I find this âtone of voiceâ stuff a bit controlling and off-putting. Who decrees that âelephant in the roomâ and âblacklistâ are not to be used? Am I missing the point or are normal phrases in use across all businesses now being policed? Fine it itâs just guidance but it feels like there are new invisible tripwires being set up for people to fall over.
Rightly or wrongly, it keeps people in employment across the country.
What no? It has been updated Iâm just the saying tone of voice article has been almost identical since the end of 2017.
Theyâve just added a few lines to it. These to be precise:
Try to keep your sentences under 20 words
Why? Because weâre all human and weâre all busy. Shorter sentences are easier for people to scan and quickly get the information they need. Plus, theyâre more accessible for people who struggle with reading or have a cognitive disability, like dyslexia.
Studies show that 11-word sentences are considered easy to read, and those of 21 words are fairly difficult. Research also shows that when your average sentence length is 14 words, people understand over 90% of it. But at 43 words, people understand under 10%Default to what youâd say out loud
The trick isnât to sit there counting every word you write. We vary the length of our sentences when we talk. So youâll see where youâd naturally pause or take a breath when you read it out loud. Reflecting that in our writing makes us sound more human, and helps with rhythm too.
and
We think about all the different meanings or associations words might have when we use them. In our technical work we use âallowlistâ and âblocklistâ instead of âwhitelistâ and âblacklist.â Thatâs because of the origin of these terms, with white being seen as âgoodâ and black being seen as âbad.â
We explain ideas as clearly as we can
Colloquial expressions (like âainâtâ and âgonnaâ) and idioms (like âthe elephant in the roomâ) might be harder for people from different cultures, or people with English as a second language, to understand.
So if thereâs a clearer way to explain an idea, thatâs what we should use. And if someone uses a word or phrase youâre not familiar with, itâs best to ask them to explain! Youâll be helping them learn to be more inclusive in their communication, and helping any other people reading or listening who might also be struggling to understand.
Everything else is untouched. The stuff about âfolks/guysâ was there from the start.
I feel like Iâm dobbing in the person whoâs meant to keep these things regularly updated.
Sorry @phildawson my bad. I thought it was untouched publicly facing.