AP® English Language and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lang/units/6/6-6)
Unit 6 · Topic 6.6
6.6 Tone and how word choice creates it
Tone is a writer's attitude toward the subject or the audience. You figure it out mostly from word choice, especially the feelings and associations that words carry beyond their dictionary meanings. Naming tone precisely, and showing which words create it, is a core skill for reading questions and the rhetorical analysis essay.
Key terms
- tone
- diction
- connotation
- denotation
- attitude
Tone, denotation and connotation
Denotation is a word's dictionary meaning. Connotation is the feeling or association it carries. "Thrifty," "frugal" and "stingy" all denote careful spending, but "thrifty" sounds admiring and "stingy" sounds critical. When a writer keeps choosing words with the same kind of connotation, those choices add up to a tone.
Tone is different from mood. Tone is the writer's attitude; mood is the feeling the reader gets. A writer can describe a frightening scene in a calm, clinical tone.
Use precise tone words
"Positive" and "negative" are only a starting point. AP questions and readers expect exact words. Build a bank you can reach for quickly:
| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| positive | admiring, reverent, celebratory, nostalgic, hopeful, affectionate |
| negative | indignant, scornful, bitter, contemptuous, resentful, mournful |
| neutral | measured, detached, clinical, matter-of-fact, objective |
| funny | wry, playful, mocking, sardonic, satirical, whimsical |
| serious | earnest, solemn, urgent, grave, sincere |
How to infer tone
- Circle words with strong connotations, especially verbs and adjectives.
- Look for a pattern: do most of the loaded words point the same direction?
- Check the target: is the attitude toward the subject, the audience or another person?
- Notice how word choice works with sentence structure. Short, blunt sentences can sharpen an angry tone; long, balanced ones can make it sound controlled.
- Combine two words if one isn't enough: "politely contemptuous," "hopeful but wary." Complex tones are common in strong writing.
Writing about tone
In an analysis, naming the tone is never the whole point. Explain how the tone serves the writer's purpose with this audience. A calm tone might make a writer seem reasonable to skeptical readers; an indignant tone might push a sympathetic audience to act.
In your own essays, aim for a measured, confident tone. Sarcasm about the other side usually costs you credibility with readers (8.2).
Tone in multiple-choice questions
Reading questions often ask about "the writer's attitude toward" a person, idea or group, or ask which word best describes the tone of a paragraph. Answer choices tend to come in pairs of near-synonyms with different strengths, such as "concerned" and "alarmed," or "skeptical" and "hostile."
To choose, go back to the exact words in the lines the question names. If the writer says a plan is "unwise," "hostile" is too strong; if the writer calls it "a reckless betrayal," "skeptical" is too weak. The right answer matches both the direction and the intensity of the language. Be especially wary of choices that sound impressive but describe a feeling the passage never shows.
Writing questions can test tone too. You may be asked which revision of a sentence keeps the tone of the rest of a draft. If the draft is formal and measured, reject choices with slang, exclamations or insults, even if they say the same thing.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Reading tone in Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield
Samuel Johnson spent years writing his Dictionary of the English Language with almost no support from Lord Chesterfield, a powerful patron he had once asked for help. Just before the Dictionary appeared, Chesterfield praised it in print. Johnson replied in a letter dated February 7, 1755 (public domain; text from Boswell's Life of Johnson): "Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it." Identify Johnson's tone and write an analytical paragraph explaining how his word choice creates it.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Gather the loaded words. "Unconcern" makes Chesterfield seem cold. "Struggling for life" makes Johnson's past difficulty sound desperate. "Encumbers him with help" is a twist: help is supposed to lighten a load, but "encumbers" means to weigh down.
- Step 2: Notice the polite surface: "my Lord," "you have been pleased to take." The courteous phrases sit right next to the criticism.
- Step 3: Name the tone precisely. The courtesy plus the cutting word choice makes the tone bitter but controlled, even politely scornful.
- Step 4: Connect tone to purpose. Johnson wants to refuse credit to a patron who helped only after success was certain, without seeming merely rude.
- Step 5: Use short quotations woven into your own sentences, and explain each one.
Answer: Model paragraph: Johnson's tone is bitterly polite: he keeps the forms of respect while using words that strip Chesterfield's praise of all value. He addresses Chesterfield as "my Lord" and refers to the "notice which you have been pleased to take," phrases that sound properly humble. Yet inside that frame he describes a patron who watches with "unconcern" while a man is "struggling for life," then "encumbers him with help." The verb "encumbers" turns help into a burden, implying that praise arriving after the danger has passed only weighs down the person it claims to rescue. By keeping his courteous phrases while choosing such cutting words, Johnson makes his rejection sound earned rather than petty: he appears restrained and dignified, which makes Chesterfield's late generosity look even emptier to anyone reading.
Common mistakes
- Naming a tone with a vague word like "negative" or "emotional." Choose a precise tone word and back it up with specific words from the text.
- Confusing tone (the writer's attitude) with mood (the reader's feeling) or with the topic.
- Stopping at "the writer uses diction to create a tone." Explain what the tone does for the writer's purpose with this audience.
- Missing mixed tones. Writers are often courteous and critical at once, as Johnson is; say both.
On the exam
- Reading questions often ask about the writer's attitude toward something. Eliminate choices that are too extreme or too mild for the actual words in the passage.
- In the rhetorical analysis essay, tone works best as part of a larger claim about purpose: "Johnson's politely scornful tone lets him reject Chesterfield without looking petty."
Connected topics
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Check yourself
4 questions on 6.6 Tone and how word choice creates it. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Samuel Johnson, letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, February 7, 1755, as printed in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Johnson had worked for years on his Dictionary of the English Language with almost no help from Chesterfield, a wealthy patron of writers. As the Dictionary neared publication, Chesterfield published two essays praising it. The French phrase in paragraph 2 means "the conqueror of the conqueror of the world."
The tone of paragraph 1 is best described as
In paragraph 3, the phrase "without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour" contributes to the tone chiefly by
The sentence "Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before" (paragraph 3) is best described as
In paragraph 5, the image of a patron "who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help" mainly serves to
0 of 4 answered