Why it matters
A growing share of brand encounters are words alone: AI answers, search snippets, chat, email. In those surfaces your sentences are the identity. Distinctive, consistent language is also simply memorable: people quote lines, not layouts.
How it works
A verbal identity defines the moves: words you always use, words you never use, sentence rhythm, how you open, how you disagree, how you talk about price and mistakes. It's documented with real examples (rewrite pairs of "before and after") so writers apply it without guessing.
What to do about it
Collect your five best-performing pieces of writing and name what they share. That pattern, written down with examples, is your verbal identity v1: most brands already speak it occasionally by accident.