What is tone in literature? understand sound when writing | Writer. com (2023)

Everything you read has a tone. Blog posts have an engaging and conversational tone; Textbooks often have an informative, factual tone. A satire can have a humorous or ironic tone. The tone of literature encompasses the wide variety of moods, thoughts, and feelings that authors infuse into their work.

But what is clay? Where does it come from? And how do authors use different keys when writing?

Sound can be a slippery concept, so let's explore it methodically. We will first define tone in literature and look at relevant examples, then we will discuss the meaning of tone and how it affects our writing. Finally, we look at tone vs mood, two commonly confused onesliterary devices.

What is tone in literature?

Tone in literature refers to the author's attitude towards a particular subject.

Tone in literature refers to the author's attitude towards a particular subject. through specificchoice of words, the author reveals his feelings and opinions to the reader and conveys the author's intentions behind the text. The tone of a story is always described with an adjective.

Tone often reveals itself through narrative details. For example, read this excerpt from Mark Twain's "a call“:

I handed the applicant the phone and sat down. Then came the strangest of all strange things in this world - a conversation with only one ending. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer You hear invitations; You don't hear a thank you. You have listening pauses of dead silence followed by seemingly irrelevant and unwarranted exclamations of elated surprise or sadness or dismay.

Which adjectives describe this excerpt? The narrator could be described as "stunned" or "stunned". The telephone is clearly a recent invention of the author's time, and the use of words such as 'irrelevant', 'unjustifiable' and 'weird' suggest the author's attitude towards telephone calls. So "amazed" or "amazed" are two possible sounds for the excerpt.

What clay is not

Before we proceed, it is important to note here which soundis not. sound writingNotrefer to the following:

• A particular character's attitude towards something.
• The narrator's attitude – including the attitudes of fictional first-person narrators.
• The mood or moods evoked by the piece.

Tonsolelyrefers to the author's attitude towards the subject of a particular text. It does not reflect the attitude of the characters, but only suggests the attitude of the author at that particular point in the text.

How to convey tone in writing

Overall, tone is conveyed in literature in two ways:

1. What the author describes to the reader, and
2. The author's choice of words.

So, in order to understand the author's tone in writing, it is important to analyze both the details the narrator goes into and the words used to describe those details.

The author can use the above two tools to convey his attitude in different ways. In the Mark Twain excerpt above, he uses first-person narration to tell you directly how he feels. But an author can use the third person to convey a tone just as easily in writing, as Kathleen Thompson Norris did in "Bridging the Years“:

Jimmy and Anne Warriner had stumbled upon the Jackson Street cottage five years before, just before their wedding, and after an ecstatic, hasty tour, dashed like children to the estate agent, willingly handing him a deposit for the first month's rent . Anne had never managed a household before, she had no eyes for outdated plumbing, uneven floors, for the dark basement sacred to cats and garbage. She and Jim chatted happily about French windows, about brick garden paths, about what plain little curtains and Anne's big brass bowl full of nasturtiums would look like on the landing of the absurd little staircase that led from the square hall to two useless little chambers above.

One way to describe the author's take on Jimmy and Anne is "mature." The details suggest a sense of seniority: the author clearly believes that Jimmy and Anne are young and a bit immature. The author expresses this using words like "absurd," "useless," and "quick," indicating that the Warriners acted hastily and without planning. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the couple's dreams (French windows, nasturtiums) and their reality (outdated plumbing, dark basement) underscores the Warriners' foolhardiness.

Still, nothing about the passage feels critical - we're just observing the Warriners in this moment in their lives. So we could say that the passage has a tone that is both 'lighthearted' and 'mature'. The author sees these characters as juvenile, but doesn't express that in a holier-than-thou way - rather, the narrative remains amused and observational.

What is tone in poetry?

Tone reveals itself in poetry in much the same way as in prose. By paying close attention to the details and wording of the poem, the reader can gain a deeper understanding of the poet's attitude.

Consider the first two couplets from the poem "Pappelstrby Chen Chen:

The speaker's tone could be described as both "gentle" and "seeking". Words like "oh" and "sorry" betray the speaker's immediate uneasiness, especially as he describes himself as "affected". Despite this, he attempts to connect with the non-employee by commenting on details one would not normally discuss with a stranger. Imagine a stranger saying these two verses to you: Does he sound confident and confident, or hesitant and confident?

tones in writing

There are countless keys to writing, limited only by the range of human emotions.

There are countless keys to writing, limited only by the range of human emotions. Let's look at some common tones you might encounter, with examples. Each written example of tone of voice conveys the same information, but uses different wording and details to convey the author's attitude.

The importance of tone in writing

Tone is an integral part of an author's style. The writer must make certain stylistic choices in order to convey a particular tone, including control over word choice, punctuation, sentence length, slang, and the observational details he chooses to include.

Let's examine three other examples of tone in literature. We note the author's stylistic choices and how the tone of the passage affects the way we read it.

Other examples of tone in literature

The following examples of tone in literature are taken from both classical and contemporary works.

Examples of tone in literature: Yiyun Li

Let's start with this excerpt from history"A Thousand Years of Good Prayer" by Yiyun Li:

Mr. Shi begins to look forward to the mornings as he sits in the park and waits for them. He addresses her as "Madam" because he has never asked her name. Madam wears colors he wouldn't imagine on a woman her age or background, red and orange and purple and yellow. She has a pair of metal hair clips, a white elephant and a blue-green peacock. They clutch her thinning hair in a shaky way that reminds him of his daughter when she was a little kid — before her hair grew out, with a plastic butterfly hanging loosely on her forehead. Mr. Shi would like to tell Madam for a brief moment how much he misses the days when his daughter was little and life was full of hope. But he is sure beforehand that his English would fail him. Also, it is never his habit to talk about the past.

Let's break down the tone of this excerpt in three steps. We need to analyze:

1. The theme of the passage
2. What details does the author present us with, and
3. The choice of words that complements these details.

The subject of this passage is the woman, whom Mr. Shi calls "madam". In particular, we read about Mr. Shi's personal relationship with Madam, who he just became friends with at a local park. Identifying this theme allows us to focus on the way she is described and the author's apparent attitude.

The details presented by the author reveal Madam's unique personality. She wears colors unexpected for "a woman her age" with hair clips appropriate for "a small child." The author also reveals that Mr. Shi has the impulse to tell Madam about his life, although it is not his habit.

Some words the author uses to describe Madam are color words: red, orange, purple and yellow, with "a white elephant and a teal peacock". She also has "thin hair" and her outfit hangs "wobbly".

Obviously, Madam is a woman of odd juxtapositions, with a child's soul that persists into old age. Nonetheless, she is described truthfully for us as the author is careful not only to mention her dress and age, but also the effect she has on Mr. Shi.

Knowing this, we can best describe the tone of this passage as "nuanced." The author wants us to learn about Madam's complexities without revealing any secrets, so the passage paints a portrait as the characters reveal themselves.

Examples of Tone in Literature: William Shakespeare</h3> Here is another example from theprologue fromRomeo and Juliet:

Two households, both equal in dignity,
In beautiful Verona, where we lay our stage,
From old rancor to new mutiny,
Where civilian blood defiles civilian hands.
Hence the deadly loins of these two foes
A pair of lovers with star crosses take their own lives;
Whose wayward pathetic falls
Do with their death to bury the quarrel of their parents.
The dreadful passage of her death-stained love,
And the continuation of her parents' anger,
What nothing could erase but the end of her children,
Is now the two-hour traffic of our stage;
Which, if you attend with patient ears,
What will be missing here, we should try to repair.

The tone of this passage as well as a recurring tone throughoutRomeo and Juliet, is a sympathy for the play's unfortunate protagonists. The narrator specifically emphasizes the situation of Romeo and Juliet: they are both "star-crossed lovers" who stem from an "old grudge" whose death is the only cure for their "parents' quarrel". The unfortunate fates of the two lovers were in the stars.

Also, the words "unhappy" and "pathetic" precede this notion that the lovers must die to resolve their family conflict. These words reveal the author's attitude towards Romeo and Juliet, and they also appear in thetime of the sonnet, which signifies both the dramatic irony of the piece and the sympathetic tone with which we should perceive it.

Why this tone? Shakespeare tries to emphasize the tragedy of this play. When young love is pure and holy, anything that interrupts that love is a human failure, and while Romeo and Juliet's romance was impulsive, it deserved a fair shot at life.

Examples of tone in literature: Neil Gaiman

Finally, let's analyze the tone of the introductory paragraphNeil Gaimans „We Can Get Them For You Wholesale“:

Peter Pinter had never heard of Aristippus of Cyrenaics, a lesser-known follower of Socrates, who claimed that avoiding trouble was the highest good attainable; however, he had lived his uneventful life according to that ordinance. In every respect but one (the inability to renounce a bargain, and who among us is entirely free from that?) he was a very moderate man. He didn't go to extremes. His speech was correct and restrained; he rarely exaggerates; he drank enough to be social and no more; he was anything but rich and by no means poor. He liked people and people liked him. With all this in mind, would you expect to find him in a low-life pub on the shabbier side of London's East End, striking what is colloquially referred to as a 'deal' with someone he barely knew? You would not. You wouldn't even expect to find him in the pub.

The author's tone in this passage is certainly ironic. Peter Pinter has a very humorous duality: despite being an immensely moderate man, he suddenly gets involved in suspicious activity in a suspicious part of town.

The author's description of Peter Pinter underscores thisIrony. Peter is described as Aristippus of Cyrenaic, whom you will probably never hear about unless you study ancient Greek philosophers. The author also draws on Peter's penchant for bargains, his "right" behavior and his real middle-class existence.

When these objects are juxtaposed with Peter's suddenly derelict surroundings, they betray the author's playful sense of irony. Not only is Peter's story filled with situational irony, but the details Gaiman focuses on reinforce that irony, creating a performance that is both humorous and confusing. The fact that Peter Pinter would "not" be expected to be in this situation is revealed by the author's ironic attitude, as well as the attitude one might expect from Peter's close relatives.

Tone vs. Mood in Literature

What is the difference between tone and mood?

The tone refers to the attitude of the author. Mood refers to the emotion the author wants to evoke in the reader.

Tone in literature, as we have already mentioned, refers to the author's attitude towards the subject of his writing. An author can express any number of attitudes through the words he uses and the details he shares.

Mood, on the other hand, refers to the emotion the author wants to evoke in the reader. In comparison to the tone, the mood of a text is far more intentional as the author wants to convey a certain feeling to the reader.

Sometimes the tone and mood of a passage are the same. The previous example from Neil Gaiman's short story is ironic in both tone and mood: the author thinks Peter's situation is full of irony, and he also wants the reader to find Peter ironic as well.

However, consider the excerpt we shared from Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet. The author's tone is deeply compassionate, but the actual mood of the passage is somber. Shakespeare wants the author to be saddened by the events of the play, because the needless death of a young love is a tragedy for which everyone is responsible.

Tuning differs from tone in three ways:

• The mood can be influenced by the setting of a piece; sound can not be.
• The author creates a mood to evoke certain emotions in the reader; Tone is a matter of the author's writing style.
• Literary resources help to develop mood; Sound relies on dialogue and description.

For more information on sentiment, see our article on sentiment in literature.

What is mood in literature? Create mood while writing

Tone vs Mood Venn Chart

What is tone and how is it different from mood? This Venn diagram summarizes their differences.

Discover tone in literature at Writers.com

The tone is a by-product of the author's style and point of view. Nonetheless, it is possible for a text to have a counterintuitive tone - the author may express one emotion but suggest another with his choice of words.

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