None of what was to form, from the 1990s onward, the recognizable badge “Nichols” can be well regarded without thoroughly double-echoing both his 1976 debut premise (Chap. 20 herein) and this chapter’s theme, the intermediary 1983 expression “The Voice of Documentary”—a necessary springboard for his celebrated (and later criticized) 1991 “theory of modes.” In short, “codes” (1976) and “voice” (1983) serve as the two pivotal concepts that illuminate the depth and complexity of Nichols’s early work, offering insight into the direction he pursued in the following decades. He writes: “[I]n the evolution of documentary the contestation among forms has centered on the question of ‘voice.’ By ‘voice,’ I mean something narrower than style: that which conveys to us a sense of a text’s social point of view, of how it is speaking to us and how it is organizing the materials it is presenting to us.” The chapter explores in depth Nichols’s “voice” metaphor and its philosophical value as a Documentary definiens.