Assignment:
Write six paragraphs. Each of which exemplifies one of the following tones:
Condescending: showing or implying condescension by stooping to the level of one's inferiors, especially in a patronizing way
Nostalgic: unhappy about being away and longing for familiar things or persons
Whimsical: playfully quaint or fanciful, esp. in an appealing and amusing way
Laudatory: expressing praise and commendation
Sardonic: grimly mocking or cynical
Exhilarated: feeling very happy, animated, or elated
DUE by the end of the 2nd Quarter.
Remember, tone (in writing) is conveyed by Details, Imagery, Diction, Figurative Language, and Syntax.
See the examples below.
Casual tone
"The way I look at it, someone needs to start doing something about disease. What’s the big deal? People are dying. But the average person doesn’t think twice about it until it affects them. Or someone they know."
Formal tone
“There was a delay in the start of the project, attributable to circumstances beyond the control of all relevant parties. Progress came to a standstill, and no one was prepared to undertake the assessment of the problem and determination of the solution.”
Tone: insane, nervous, and guilty
“It was A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND -- MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. O God! What COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder -- louder -- louder!”
-Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”,
Tone: calm, peaceful
“It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference.”
–Ernest Hemingway “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Tone: mysterious, secretive, ominous, or evil.
“There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.”
-Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
