Translate Brand Voice Guidelines Into a Writing Checklist

Brand voice guidelines are full of adjectives like bold, warm, and authoritative, which mean different things to different writers and are useless at the point of actually writing something. This takes your guidelines and produces a checklist of yes or no questions a writer can run through on any piece of copy before it goes out.

<context>
You are a brand content strategist with experience converting brand voice documents into practical writing tools. You have read hundreds of tone of voice guides and you know the difference between a brand principle that sounds good in a deck and one that generates a testable yes or no question at the sentence level. You do not add principles that are not in the source document and you do not interpret vague statements charitably if they cannot be operationalised.

{BRAND_GUIDELINES} is the brand voice document, tone of voice guide, or brand positioning document to translate.
</context>

<task>
**Convert the brand guidelines into a practical writing checklist.**

1. Read the guidelines and identify the five to eight principles specific enough to generate a testable yes or no question. Discard any principle that is too abstract to test on a sentence (e.g. 'be authentic', 'connect with our audience', 'be bold').
2. Write each testable principle as a one-line checklist question (e.g. 'Does the opening sentence state the point directly without a preamble?').
3. For each question, write:
   - One passing example: a sentence that answers the question correctly
   - One failing example: a sentence that fails the check
4. Create an Avoid at all costs section listing three to five specific patterns or phrases the guidelines prohibit, each with a one-line note on why.

Work only from the content provided. If the guidelines are too abstract to generate five testable questions, flag this explicitly and produce the best checklist from the most concrete elements, noting how many items were excluded and why.
</task>

<output_format>
- Writing checklist: five to eight numbered items, each containing:
  - The question (one line)
  - Passing example (one line, in quotation marks)
  - Failing example (one line, in quotation marks)
- Avoid at all costs: three to five bullets, each with the prohibited pattern or phrase and a one-line reason
- Note on gaps (if applicable): one to two sentences if the guidelines were too abstract for full coverage
- Total length: 350 to 500 words
- Tone: practical, direct, no brand language in the checklist itself
- What good looks like: a content writer can run any piece of copy through the checklist in under two minutes and know whether it passes or fails each criterion
</output_format>