Compare passages for tone
Key Notes :
The tone is the attitude that is expressed in a text. A writer’s tone can communicate a range of feelings, such as excitement, humor, skepticism, or respect.
The tone is revealed through the language that a writer uses in a text. For example, is the information presented through direct statements or through figurative language? Is the topic described through positive words and phrases or through negative ones? These types of text features can help express different tones.
- The city’s oppressive heat drove us from shop to shop in search of relief. Words like ‘oppressive’ and ‘drove’ create an intense, negative tone.
- With a population of over thirteen million, the bustling city of London is active day and night. Words like ‘bustling’ and ‘active’ create a positive and upbeat tone.
Learn with an example
🤜 Select the passage that has a more childish tone.
Tommy Grimes was sometimes a good boy and sometimes a bad boy. When he was a bad boy, he was a very bad boy.
The boy was allowed to read what he liked and devoured Grimm’s Tales, The Seven Champions of Christendom and The Arabian Nights. He was an imaginative and reflective child, full of wonder.
Adapted from Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales and Herbert Paul, The Life of Froude
The first passage is more childish in tone. It uses basic vocabulary and sing-song repetition, whereas the other passage uses more sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure.
🤜 Select the passage that has a more biting tone.
When Edna entered the dining room one evening, an unusually animated conversation seemed to be going on. Several persons were talking at once.
They were always engaged in some little discussion or trivial dispute in whispering voices. Though Catherine’s supporting opinion was frequently called for, she was never able to give it because she hadn’t heard a word of the conversation.
Adapted from Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
The second passage is more biting in tone. It expresses negativity towards the trivial disputes conducted in whispering voices that make Catherine unable to participate in the conversation. The other passage is more detached and unemotional toward its subject.
🤜 Select the passage that has a more agitated tone.
I told the doctor that I had a peculiar feeling in my chest. In five minutes he was pounding my midriff in. And the questions that man asked! He began with my grandparents, roamed through my childhood and youth, dissected my teenage years, and finally came down to coffee and what I ate for breakfast.
The doctor was sitting in an easy chair and swinging his hat, which he held in both hands, and he was thinking. Except for him, there was not a soul in the room. The sun had set, and the shades of evening began settling in the corners under the furniture.
Adapted from Lloyd Osbourne, ‘Jones’ and Anton Chekhov, ‘The Doctor’
The first passage is more agitated in tone. It uses exclamations (And the questions that man asked!) and hyperbole (pounding my midriff in) to show that the character is unsettled. The other passage establishes a more somber tone with phrases such as not a soul in the room and shades of evening.
let’s practice!
