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Tone is a literary technique used by writers to convey attitude to readers, and can be created through elements such as diction, syntax, and imagery. It can be found in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and is not the same as mood. Mood describes the emotions or feelings a work evokes, while tone is a technique used to create moods.
The tone of a piece of literature is a literary technique employed by the writer to convey attitude to his readers. This attitude could be towards his subjects, his readers, or both. Writers can set tones for both fiction and nonfiction works, and the attitudes communicated will be representative of the author, narrator, or characters, depending on the nature of the work. Writers can use numerous elements to create a wide range of tones, including formal or informal, humorous or understated, personal or distant. While the tone of a work can help convey mood, writers and readers need to understand that tone and mood are not the same thing.
Diction, or word choice, may be the most easily recognized tool for setting the tone of a literary work, but a writer can employ a variety of other literary techniques. For example, a writer might arrange his words in a specific way to achieve a certain affect, practice, or study known as syntax. He may also use images, which is a way of using words to appeal to one or all of the readers senses and often includes the use of metaphors and similes. Writers often manipulate details, including or omitting them, to achieve certain tones. Each of these techniques can maintain the same tone throughout the work, or change or evolve it, as sometimes happens.
Tone can be found in almost any type of literature. When works of fiction such as novels, novellas, plays, and short stories communicate tones, these tones are usually the attitudes of the narrators or characters in the works. Similarly, when nonfiction pieces such as magazine articles, memoirs and biographies, and documentaries convey tones, the attitudes are generally those of the author. Keep in mind that these aren’t concrete rules, though. The tones of novels could express the attitude of the author, just as the tones of documentaries could express the attitudes of the subjects.
Perhaps the writing that most recognizably uses the literary technique of tone is poetry. This could be because poems are designed to convey emotions and feelings. Poets use the technique to help their readers better capture those emotions and feelings. Just as with other pieces of fiction and nonfiction, the tones of poems can be the attitudes of the writers or the attitudes of a narrator or subject.
It’s important to understand that the tone and mood of a piece of literature are not the same thing. Writers and readers should not use these words interchangeably. When a person describes the mood of a work, he mainly describes the emotions or feelings that the work gave him after reading it. Therefore, mood is more of a literary term, while tone is a true literary technique. Writers can use the tone-making technique to help them create moods.
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