Compare passages for tone
Key notes:
Tone is the attitude that is expressed in a text. A writer’s tone can communicate a range of feelings, such as excitement, humour, scepticism or respect.
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 agitated tone.
The singing teakettle, as it boiled on the stovetop, sounded like a cicada pouring forth its woes to departing summer. Each of the tea drinkers silently drained his cup, the host last of all, according to established etiquette.
The teakettle was enormous, capable of deluging the house in its incessant showers of steam; it was the enraged representative of all the household chores Katharine had neglected.
Adapted from Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea and Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
- The second passage is more agitated in tone. It uses phrases like deluging the house and enraged representative to give a sense of dread, whereas the other passage is more restrained.
✈️ Select the passage that has a more restrained tone.
Underground water, percolating through porous riverbeds, will eventually bring about a collapse. The rocks forming the slopes of the mountain will, from time to time, give and slide into the valley.
There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness. A tremendous tower of ice leaned slowly outward and then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a demolished skyscraper.
Adapted from James Geikie, Fragments of Earth Lore and Rex Beach, The Iron Trail
- The first passage is more restrained in tone. It features straightforward observations with few adjectives, while the other passage is full of dramatic descriptions, such as terrifying in its loudness and roared downward.
✈️ Select the passage that has a more informative tone.
The ‘standing-sitting dive’ must be made from a good diving board. The diver stands at the edge of the board with his or her arms straight down. The hands should be at right angles to the arms, the palms downward.
The young man darted from his dressing room like a sprite and dived into the pool. His body made no splash, but entered the water like a beam of light, refracting as he swam underwater.
Adapted from Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton, Swimming Scientifically Taught: A Practical Manual for Young and Old and John T. Wheelwright, ‘The Roman Bath’
- The first passage is more informative in tone. It offers instruction in plain language, while the other uses figurative language to establish an amused tone.
Let’s practice!
Select the passage that has a more critical tone.
The solitary house stood in a sadly neglected garden. It was uninhabited, but had, within the last year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable.
The little house seemed almost like a tent pitched against the sunshine. It had the crispness of a freshly starched summer gown, and the geraniums on the veranda bloomed like flowers in a bonnet.
Adapted from Charles Dickens, ‘The Haunted House’ and Edith Wharton, The Touchstone