The way you perceive a person’s tone of voice has a great deal to do with how you understand what that person is saying. The same is true of tone in writing; it’s vital to pick up on clues to tone in order to understand a written piece fully. This lesson shows you how.
Say this word out loud: “Sure.”
How did you say it? Did you say it with a smile, as in “Sure, anytime”? Or did you say it flatly, as if responding to a command? Or did you stretch the word out, “Suuuurre,” as if you didn’t believe what someone just said? Or did you ask it, as in, “Are you sure this is okay?”
Perhaps you didn’t realize there were so many ways to say this one single word, “sure.” But there are. Why?
The word itself isn’t different; its denotation (dictionary meaning) isn’t different; so how can the same word express so many different things?
The difference in the meaning of all these sures comes from the tone how you say the word, and thus how your listeners will feel when they hear you say it
When you speak and listen, you can hear the tone of your voice as well as the tone of the person to whom you are speaking. But how do you catch tone in writing? How do you know how the writer wants his or her words to sound? “Sure” by itself doesn’t tell us whether you should whisper or shout it. You need to look at the context surrounding that word to find clues about the proper tone to use.
Think about how tone is created in speech. When you say “sure,” the tone changes according to how loudly or softly you say the word and how slowly or quickly you say it. Tone is also conveyed (or supported)by the speaker’s expressions and body language. Inwriting, of course, you do not have these visual resources, but you do have plenty of clues to help you determine tone. Those clues come from the elements of language and style that you’ve studied so far: point of view, diction, and style.
It may help you to think of a sentence as a collection of ingredients (words and phrases) that result in a dish(idea). These elements of language and style are like the spices that you need to give that sentence a certain flavor. Different spices will result in a different flavor(tone).
Look at the following two letters. Both convey essentially the same information, but they have two rather different tones.
Which of these letters has a more positive tone? As you can see, letter B is more positive. Why? What do you notice about letter B that is different from letter A?
List your observations below:
Example: I noticed that letter A is addressed “Dear Client,” while letter B is addressed “Dear Valued Customer.”