In this lesson,
you'll learn about the differences between voice and tone and learn
why an inconsistent tone undermines an essay's effectiveness.
Voice, Defined
When we talk
about a writer's voice, we mean the qualities of his/her writing.
These qualities, which distinguish one style from another, come from
the writer's decisions about the subject matter and how s/he uniquely
uses various writing methods. In many ways, a writer's voice is like
a personality, although it might be distinguished from the writer's
actual, non-writing personality. If you study many works by one writer,
you will begin to notice certain habits--perhaps the writer writes
in long sentences or uses a lot of figures of speech or semicolons.
Combined, these stylistic habits produce a voice-an individual
writing style that is like no other. When teachers urge writers to
find their own voice, they are suggesting that students play with
style until they reach and polish their own individual method of articulating
ideas and feelings on paper. Studying style-both your own and other
people's-will help you find your voice. One very important element
of voice is tone, the subject of this lesson.
Tone, Defined
Imagine this
scenario: you have just cleaned the entire house for your parents.
You've picked up old magazines and dirty dishes, dusted, vacuumed,
and even put air fresheners out. Your mother crosses the threshold
from the front porch to the living room after a long day at work,
and, looking around, says, "I just can't believe this!" Your mother's
tone will convey pleasure; your sense of this pleasure will be reinforced
by the sound of her voice and a gesture of some kind: she'll smile
and probably even hug you. But what if your mother came home earlier
than you expected, before you had time to clean up a big mess you'd
made? She could use the same words-"I just can't believe this!"-but
would communicate something very different in tone. Her facial expressions,
other bodily gestures, and the pitch and volume of her voice would
communicate this difference.
Tone, as it is
talked about in reference to written English, means the same thing
or very much the same thing as it does in reference to spoken English.
Like style, it refers to the way something is said as opposed
to what is said. The term tone describes the attitude a writer
communicates about himself, his audience, and his subject. But because
writers usually are not with their readers while they're being read
and can't add gestures and body language to the meaning of their paragraphs
and sentences, their tonal cues must be clear in their writing.
A writer's tone
is determined by the choices she makes at every level of the writing
process-by her word choices, her point of view choices, her use of
syntax, and so on. The tone you want to use (or achieve in the revision
process) will be determined by the purpose of your writing project
and your intended audience. Academic essays generally require a more
formal tone unless they are personal narratives. While the conventions
surrounding such essays may require you to avoid the use of contractions
(can't, won't, wouldn't, etc.), slang terms, and other elements more
appropriate to the plain style, they do not require you to adopt an
unnecessarily unclear or convoluted style. Some students believe that
using complicated syntax and multi-syllabic words will make their
essays more sophisticated, and thus better. As we'll see in Lesson
3, Word Choice, writing this way is not only unnecessary,
but also a violation of the ethic of clarity that marks good style.
On
Being Consistent
There are certain
choices you must make before you begin to write an essay. One
of them concerns your tone. Your essay's purpose and audience will
determine your tone, so, while it is not always necessary to write
an outline before you delve into your subject, you should have some
sense of what your purpose is and audience is.
An inconsistent
tone will undermine a writer's authority. In every case, no matter
what you are writing, you'll want to communicate some sense of authority
over your subject matter. In a research paper, your authority will
come from how well you are able to express the knowledge you have
gained about your topic. Thus, your use of quotes from outside sources
will reinforce the energy you have put into gathering information,
which will, in turn, reinforce your credibility. Still, too many quotes
in such a paper will communicate a lack of interest and knowledge
in your subject: they'll imply that you're choosing to have others
speak for you because you don't want to (or can't) speak for yourself.
In an informal essay, your authority will come from your sincerity,
or from how well you convey your willingness to share your experiences
with your readers.
Let's suppose
you're writing a paper about William Faulkner's "Barn Burning." There
are conventions that guide the writing of such a paper, as we discuss
in Writing About Literature. You probably
will begin your paper by abiding by these conventions: you introduce
your topic early on in the essay and avoid the use of contractions
and informal words in order to maintain a more formal or academic
tone.
If you alter
your tone in your second paragraph, you will undermine your credibility
as a critic, as this example shows:
I thought William
Faulkner's "Barn Burning" was really good. It made me want to jump
up and shout, something I wouldn't normally do, as anyone who knows
me will tell you.
It is common
to shift tone in a variety of ways during the drafting process. However,
once you understand your purpose and audience and the various conventions
that guide us as we write, you'll be able to revise toward a consistent
tone of voice. This first example confuses the essay's purpose by
moving out of the third person into the first person; this shift in
point of view choice focuses too much on the writer's response to
the text and too little on the text itself. It seems to avoid the
subject and it undermines the writer's credibility by straying
too far from the essay's intention. Here's a revised example:
William Faulkner's
"Barn Burning" is about a small boy at conflict with himself.
This
revision is an improvement because it maintains the third person point
of view, which in turn reveals that the subject of the paper (Faulkner's
story) is the topic at hand
On
the other hand, if you're writing a personal essay about an experience
that changed your life in some way, it's not only appropriate for
you to use the first person and to choose more informal words-it's
probably preferable. This is because personal essays have a different
purpose than academic essays: their intentions are to communicate
experience through the filter of self or personality. If you stayed
in the third person in a personal essay, you might even run the risk
of seeming aloof or standoffish, which would, in turn, make your readers
mistrust your sincerity.
Exercise
In
the next few lessons, we'll discuss other techniques writers use to
define their tone, but first try to determine the tone that is being
expressed in the following examples. Is the writer adopting a formal
(eloquent) or informal (plain style) tone? Is the writer's
implied audience public or private? Does the writer seem to care about
his or her subject matter? Compare your descriptions of the tone in
the following examples to ours.
Everyone in
this part of Virginia likes to go around shopping for antiques,
don't ask me why.
It is imperative
that the committee resolve the company's conflicts.
Sometimes you
learn a lot when you fail to do something you set out to do.
Summary
When we talk
about tone, we mean the attitude a writer communicates toward her
subject and audience. Your tone will be determined by a number of
choices. An inconsistent tone is one that fails to focus on a writer's
purpose, or shifts between levels of style, point of view,
word choice, and so on.
