In this paper we report on how two Swedish mathematics teacher guides communicate with teachers. We have analysed the guides from the theoretical stance that curriculum resources can support teachers’ pedagogical design capacity, i.e. support them to find productive ways to adapt curriculum resources. To investigate the guides we studied the “voice” by the use of language, focusing on personal pronouns and imperatives. Our analysis shows that both guides often speak “through” the teacher with narratives and scripted instructions, rather than “to” the teacher about strengths and weaknesses with different teaching design considerations. The results also show that in addition to speaking “to” or “through” guides can speak “past” the teacher, positioning her as an observer of the interaction between students and textbooks. This language construction is unexpected and may thus be seen as expanding the framework for investigating the “voice” of teacher guides.