Brief Reminders on Common Terms: Tone, Shift, Diction, Images, Structure

Tone is the writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject and the audience. Understanding tone in prose and poetry can be challenging because the reader doesn't have voice inflection to obscure or to carry meaning. Thus, an appreciation of word choice, details, imagery, and language all contribute to the understanding of tone. To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.

Angry	Sad	Sentimental	Afraid
Sharp	Cold	Fanciful	Detached
Upset	Urgent	Complimentary	Contemptuous
Silly	Joking	Condescending	Happy
Boring	Poignant	Sympathetic	Confused
Apologetic	Hollow	Childish	Humorous
Joyful	Peaceful	Horrific	Allusive
Mocking	Sarcastic	Sweet	Objective
Nostalgic	Vexed	Vibrant	Zealous
Tired	Frivolous	Irrelevant	Bitter
Audacious	Benevolent	Dreamy	Shocking
Seductive	Restrained	Somber	Candid
Proud	Giddy	Pitiful	Dramatic
Provocative	Didactic	Lugubrious	Sentimental

SHIFT IN TONE: Good authors are rarely monotone. A speaker’s attitude can shift on a topic, or an author might have one attitude toward the audience and another toward the subject. The following are some clues to watch for shifts in tone:

• key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons)
• paragraph divisions
• changes in sentence length
• sharp contrasts in diction

DICTION:

• Laugh: guffaw, chuckle, titter, giggle, cackle, snicker, roar, chortle, guffaw, yuk
• Self-confident: proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck-up, haughty, smug, condescending
• House: home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, home, residence, dwelling, crib, domicile
• Old: mature, experienced, antique, relic, senior, ancient, elderly, senescent, venerable
• Fat: obese, plump, corpulent, portly, porky, burly, husky, full-figured, chubby, zaftig

IMAGES: The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that appeal to sensory experiences helps to create the author’s tone.

• My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained)
• An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king. (somber, candid)
• He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)
• Love sets you going like a fat gold watch. (fanciful)
• Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking)

SENTENCE STRUCTURE: How a sentence is constructed affects what the audience understands. Sentence structure affects tone.

• Parallel syntax (similarly styled phrases and sentences) creates interconnected emotions, feelings and ideas.
• Short sentences are punchy and intense. Long sentences are distancing, reflective and more abstract.
• Loose sentences hang all kinds of modifiers off the end of an independent clause. Periodic sentences point to the end, so modifiers build the to the final point (main clause).
• The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader to a question and creates tension between speaker and listener.  
• Short sentences are often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest greater thought, intelligence, abstraction, or distance.
• Sentence Structure -- fragments, simple, compound, complex, compound-complex. Sentence structure also deals with elements such as dependent and independent clauses.