Tone 101

Ezekiel Welch

Instructor Loudon

ENGL 101 Sec #5

October 6th, 2014

Tone

Tone is everywhere; in books read, texts sent, movies watched, and music heard. Tone is the attitude of a piece of writing and its general character. When an author writes a piece of writing the author will be approaching the writing with a general theme in mind. How the author approaches this theme is the tone.

The attitude or tone of the piece is decided by the author. Authors have many different ways of portraying there wanted tone. Descriptive details and adjectives can be a very helpful way to show tone. These literal elements along with word choice and diction play a huge roll in authors tone. Tone represents the attitude or feeling of the speaker.

Types of Tone:

The variance in types of tones is vast. Tone can be things such as playful, ironic, serious, intimate, formal, informal, serious, somber, or many other attitudes. Every writing has tone but details must be used to properly show tone. In short messages such as texts tone can be very hard to portray and things can be interpreted in many different ways. Writing a letter to a family member will have different tone than a college acceptance letter. The family letter may have a very playful and happy tone when a college acceptance letter will have a formal and serious tone.

Difference between tone and mood:

Tone and mood are often confused, they are not the same thing though. Mood is the feeling and atmosphere the a piece lays forward and creates for the reader. It is essentially how it makes the reader feel. Tone is the attitude toward the piece and the subject written about.

Tone is Everyday Life:

Tone is not just in writing. Tone can also be related to music, the spoken word, and art. The tone of music deals with the duration, intensity, and pitch. The way notes and bars are played can show how the musician would like the work to be interpreted and the attitude of the piece. Art can show tone in the colors used and such things as stoke size or aggressiveness of the painting. This shows that tone can be picked up on in many ways. In language and human communication tone is everything. The way people speak and there diction of words can completely change the meaning of a sentience. Eye contact, body language, and vocal volume also pushes the attitude of communication.

Examples of Tone:

One Seinfeld episode touched on this. One of the characters was cast for a roll in a movie. He had one line, “these pretzels are making me thirsty.” How are these words to be said though? What should the tone of this sentence be? This greatly effects the point of the sentence. Should it be said angrily, happy, sarcastically? Tone can completely chance the point of what is said or written and this is why it is such an important literal element.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMe7mlRv8UE

The book “Catching the Rye” by J.D. Salinger’s uses some very good examples of bitterly sarcastic tone. (From Literarydevices.net)

•“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

•“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.”

•“Goddamn money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.”

•“Catholics are always trying to find out if you’re Catholic.”

Works Cited

Lunsford, Andrea, Michal Brody, Lisa Ede, Beverly J. Moss, Carole Clark Papper, Keth Walters. ''Everyone’s an Author with Reading. ''New York: Norton, 2013. Print.

"Tone - Definition and Examples of Tone." Literary Devices. Web. 30 Sept. 2014.