In this article you’ll learn what is tone in writing, what types of tone are, how to define a tone of the text with examples.
If the style is a rational component of any text, then the tone of the text is its emotional coloring.
What Is Tone in Writing?
The tone of the text is a reflection of the author’s emotional attitude to some events, characters, objects, or directly to the audience. This is the emotional component of the text.
This feature of writing is very important. Indeed, without emotions, the text turns out to be formal, boring, and monotonous.
Types of Tone in Writing
The tone conveys emotions that are hidden in the text (for example, in an essay, novel, or story). These emotions can translate a wide variety of feelings:
- happiness,
- seriousness,
- formality,
- humour,
- sadness,
- threat,
- officiality,
- hostility,
- optimism etc.
The tone of the text can be compared to the tone of the voice. Our voice sounds completely different when we are angry, happy, annoyed, or worried about something. But how to convey all these emotions through the text?
If you were a photographer, the tone would be expressed in setting the light, for example. If you are making a movie, then the tone would be musical accompaniment.
But to give the text the right tone, you will need words. And not just words, but exactly those that can accurately and correctly convey the right emotion and create the necessary mood of your piece of writing.
Why Does the Tone in Literature Matter?
The tone is one of the most essential parts of meaning and understanding any literary work.
Understanding the tone of a text is more important than understanding its content. Because if you don’t feel the author’s tone, then most likely you won’t be able to understand the true meaning of a literary work.
Read also posts:
- “How to Write a Persuasive Essay and Article: Complete Guide.”
- “What Is Formal and Informal Writing: Characteristics, Key Differences and Examples”.
How to Define the Tone of the Text: Examples
To understand how to define the tone in writing, we will use two fragments from well-known literary works.
Let’s look at how, with the help of the right words, the writers achieved such a realistic transmission of their true emotions and mood.
Example 1
Now read the first excerpt from the historical novel “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens:
“There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.”
And now look at the same fragment, but with highlighted words that best convey the context, mood, and emotion of the author:
“There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.”
All these words give the text the right tone: mysterious and even gloomy.
Example 2
The second excerpt is from the novel “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy:
“On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly person astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.”
The tone of this fragment helps to provide the reader with the desired portrait of the character: careless and disdainful attitude towards the hero.
Conclusion
Those writers who do not pay due attention to the tone of their literary works make a huge mistake. And it is in vain. Tone can both: increase the interest of the reader and kill him.
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