Persuasion: Tone
The most appropriate tone to use when producing any professional writing document is one that is confident, friendly, and, well, professional. You’ve probably heard that before, whether or not you’ve ever produced a professional writing document. But how do you achieve it? And while we’re on the topic, just what is tone anyway?
Tone in Professional Writing
In its most basic sense, tone is the quality or expression of sound. Think of the human voice and how we use it to express surprise, anger, happiness, humor. When we refer to the spoken word, we speak of tone in terms of pitch or intonation and emphasis. These elements can change the interpretation or connotation of word or a complete sentence.
For example, if you consider that in the following sentence, bold italics represent the word that’s being emphasized, see how the meaning of the whole can change. Same words, same sentence, but multiple meanings.
I saw her with him at the carnival. [means: it might have been someone else’s rumor, but I actually witnessed it!]
I saw her with him at the carnival. [means: she’s the subject; most likely disbelief that he’d go out with her again, particularly after what she did to him the last time!]
I saw her with him at the carnival. [means: they weren’t just there separately--they were actually together!]
I saw her with him at the carnival. [means: he’s the subject, most likely disbelief that she’d go out with him]
I saw her with him at the carnival. [means: can you believe going to the carnival for a date??]
Throw in facial expressions and gestures, and you have a whole different set of ways to interpret tone when you’re talking face to face with someone.
But how do you achieve tone in the written word?
Tone and the Written Word
It might seem impossible for the written word to possess a tone, but in truth it is not that difficult once you learn what to look for. Email, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of electronic communication have established a wide variety of emojis to indicate a wide variety of emotions or situations.
Yet it’s hardly possible to use emojis in a serious piece of professional writing. Imagine ending your cover letter with a “hopeful” face or the prayerful emoji. What would your potential employer think? Or consider putting a “smiley” face beside your recommendations in a recommendations report. Friendly, yes; professional, no. :-(
So how can you achieve tone when you’re limited to typing words on paper? For starters, in writing, punctuation and font style can help you achieve tone:
An exclamation point indicates excitement, anger, or some other elevated emotional response.
A dash [ - ] sets off a quick interjection that would otherwise interrupt the sentence.
Ellipsis [ . . . ] can indicate timidity or hesitation, or they can be used to show the reader that something has been omitted from quoted material.
But if you think about it, none of those forms of punctuation or style are acceptable in professional writing. Can you imagine actually writing to a potential client that "The plan proposed by our company will within two years after its completion save your organization . . . $250,000"? What do you insert in the space left by the “. . .”? A drum roll?
So where does that leave us with regard to tone in writing? When in doubt about anything — and that means anything [note the emphasis there] — in this course, always refer back to the guiding principle: professional writing is reader-centered. So, where tone is concerned, how do you reach a reader? How do you prevent alienating that reader?
In other words, how can you achieve a businesslike but friendly tone in professional writing?
- Avoid a negative tone, even when presenting negative information.
- Avoid overly-professional or haughty language.
Think about these two basic guidelines, and the rest will fall into place.
Avoiding a Negative Tone
It’s not easy to avoid a negative tone, particularly when you have to pass along negative information. It helps, though, to place yourself in the position of the reader and anticipate a response based upon what you’ve written.
Say you’re the head of a particular academic department at Virginia Tech, and you’re reading an evaluation of the department you asked a group of majors to perform. The following examples from this report both refer to the same topic, but which one would strike you as more friendly? In other words, as the primary audience for the report, which one would YOU want to read?
EXAMPLE 1
The department isn’t doing enough to help its majors get the classes they need at the times they need them, and it has failed to purchase updated laboratory equipment that students must have if they are going to get anything from this major.
EXAMPLE 2
In a random survey of 50 majors, students responded that they would appreciate a broader range of courses offered across a broader range of times. They also indicated their belief that the department as a whole could benefit from new laboratory equipment, specifically the sort of equipment that would provide greater insight into the topics a well-prepared major must know.
Of course, that second example is a bit longer, but it avoids a common pitfall of the first: it takes negative information and makes it positive. Look again at that first example:
The department isn’t doing enough to help its majors get the classes they need at the times they need them, and it has failed to purchase updated laboratory equipment that students must have if they are going to get anything from this major.
Those italicized phrases are negative, condemnatory, accusatory. In fact, after the sentence above, you could easily imagine a hidden sentence that is implied by the tone of what was just written: This department sucks. Of course, it might all be true — horribly, horribly true. But you can’t just say it that way.
Do you have any other options? Yes, you do, but it will take some attention to detail. Whenever you have something negative to say, you must work to express it in as positive a way as possible. The second example in the introductory section focuses on the same topic and imparts the same information, but does so in a positive way.
Tone issues don’t end, however, with a discussion of negative expressions. There’s the little matter of haughtiness we have to consider.
Avoiding a Haughty Tone
Some people suffer from the misconception that in order for writing to be considered businesslike or professional, it must use language that is elevated. It’s got to sound official, right, and what better way to do that than to use big, scholarly, “smart” words?
Unfortunately, it is more plausible that such an edict will result in obfuscation. Or, in other words, follow that rule and you’re more likely to end up confusing your reader.
If your goal is to connect with the reader, use 25 cent words, not $25 ones. However, if your goal is to sound superior to, smarter than, more informed than your reader, or if you want to speak in a coded language that only a portion of your audience — the truly knowledgeable — will be able to understand, then go for it.
Think that’s a joke? Try these three examples from a single scholarly text (author’s name and text title withheld so as not to embarrass anyone!):
EXAMPLE 1
This is the story about the fabulation of a narrative “space on the side of the road” that enacts the density, texture, and force of a lived cultural poetics . . . . [This region] has, through a long history of exploitation and occupation by an industry and an incessant narrativization of a cultural real, come to imagine its place within its spaces of desire.
EXAMPLE 2
She pulls herself back from Ellis’s narrative spell . . . by interrupting the pull of intensifying aporia with instrumental discourse.
EXAMPLE 3
Confronting his own very real inarticulateness in the face of the state apparatus, Forest turned his body into a concrete sign in a field of semiotic action. In a self-presentation both fully, and literally, caught in the other’s code and yet carving out a space of self-construction within and against it, he inscribed himself into a power relation that objectified and subjugated him.
As a reasonably intelligent individual pursuing a college degree, you should have no problem understanding the meaning of any of those three examples. But what if you do? What if you aren’t sure what any of them mean? Does this mean you’re intellectually impaired — that you’re simply not as smart as you thought you were? Do you at least feel less intelligent?
Try another example from a different book, different author:
In such typology the category of intention will not disappear: it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance. Above all, we will then be dealing with different kinds of marks or chains of iterable marks and not with an opposition between citational utterances on the one hand and singular and original event-utterances on the other. The first consequence of this will be the following: given that structure of iteration, the intention animating the utterance will never be through and through present to itself and to its content. The iteration structuring it introduces into it a priori an essential dehiscence and cleft [brisure].
This example likely evokes in you responses like those you had when you read the above three excerpts: uncertainty, alienation, a lack of understanding. Maybe you even feel disturbed or angry or upset that someone would write this way. Who are they talking to? Don’t they want everyone to understand what they’re saying? Do they think they’re smarter than everyone else?
Do you want your reader to ask those questions about something you have written? If not, then you need to remember the cardinal rule: Write to your readers, not above them and not below them. But you must also consider what beyond tone will connect them to your subject (and vice versa). Your use of details is the next consideration.
Because professional writing is persuasive, it is rhetorical in nature. Because it is rhetorical in nature, it relies for its success on its ability to connect with its audience: it must have a clearly stated and achievable purpose, include evidence that will speak convincingly to your readers, and use a tone that is adapted to the particular context. If you can grasp the importance of these principles, you will have accomplished some of the most vital goals involved in successful professional writing.