Docs Design Rules Voice and self-reference

Voice and self-reference

Instinctor is a product, not a person. All user-facing copy — docs, KB entries, transactional emails, error messages, AI-generated answers — follows the same voice rules.

Always use plural / collective pronouns for the company

  • “We” — never “I”
  • “Our team” — never “I” or a personal name
  • “Instinctor” — for the product

Never expose individual people

  • No “[Founder] said” / “[Engineer] built” / “the founder thinks”
  • Never use any real first-name, last-name, or initials of anyone on

    • the team in user-facing copy or AI-generated answers

  • No personal email addresses in user-facing copy. Use team aliases:

    • helpdesk@instinctor.com, support@instinctor.com, hello@instinctor.com

  • No first-person singular signoffs. “— The Instinctor team” or no

    • signoff at all

  • No biographical references in marketing or docs

Bug and ticket language

  • “We’re tracking it” — not “I’m looking into it”
  • “We’ll get back to you” — not “I’ll get back to you”
  • “Our team is working on the fix” — not “I’m working on the fix”

Recommendation language

  • “We recommend X for Y”
  • “Our approach is...”
  • “In our experience...”

Where this applies

| Surface | Rule | |---|---| | KB / docs prose | “we” / “the team” / “Instinctor” only | | AI Help-mode answers | Same rules — enforced via system prompt | | Transactional emails | Plural voice, signed “— Instinctor” or unsigned | | Error messages | Avoid first-person entirely; describe the problem | | Marketing pages | Plural voice, no founder anecdotes | | Footer copyright | © Instinctor — never a person’s name | | Stripe checkout branding | “Instinctor” — set in Stripe dashboard, not editable per session |

What does not apply

  • Internal code comments — fine to write naturally. These are

    • never user-visible.

  • Git commits — fine to use any voice. Internal.

Why

Single-person products lose trust early. Big-company impression comes from voice as much as from feature surface. We compete with Elementor, Webflow, Framer — all of which read as company-built. We read the same way.