Tone and Audience Awareness

The RSCC
Online Writing Lab

Tone and Audience Awareness

When I first explain tone to my students, I act out two roles. I ask one of my female students to imagine that we're both single and in a crowded nightclub. Then, with total disinterest and a mere nod of my head, I say, "Now there's a good-looking guy," and then look away. Then I ask the class to compare that comment with the same one said differently. I jut out one hip and place my hand on it, widen my eyes, heighten my Southern accent and say, "Now there's a good-looking guy," and continue to stare in the hypothetical guy's direction.

They always get the point.

This exercise demonstrates how body language and vocal inflection make a difference in how we perceive one another. But when we communicate in writing, we must use other methods to present ourselves effectively, whether that writing is e-mail or a composition assignment.

Grammar and punctuation are a start. For instance, learning when to use a semicolon, as opposed to a comma or dash, can control the way a sentence sounds in the reader's head. And in e-mail, the use of emoticons (smiley or sad faces made with a colon and a parenthesis are examples) has become popular, along with interspersing a comment with written body language (grin).

But these methods are rarely completely effective, especially for young writers or for people who rarely read, because the first method takes time to develop while the second method is a short-cut more akin to verbal communication--not good writing.

It is therefore useful for writers to seek audience awareness and to pay attention to what they say and how they say it.

Writers should always try and avoid:

1. Talking down to the reader (don't be condescending)
2. Talking over the head of the reader (don't be highfalutin)
3. Angering or frustrating your reader or writing while angry
4. Insulting the reader's intelligence
5. Preaching to the reader
6. Using sarcasm, irony, exaggeration or unsuitable humor
7. Shifting tone (using cute or informal words when serious ones are more appropriate)
8. Being too aggressive or opinionated
9. Buttering up the reader by being insincere
10. Using the reader as a sounding board or complaint department.

Becoming sensitive to these problem areas will help a writer develop personal qualities that contribute to writing with sincerity, and if a writer is truly sincere, the reader will usually recognize that fact. Audience awareness is crucial in order to have satisfactory tone. When writing for publication in a local newspaper, it's important to write on an eighth-grade level, so that many people can easily understand you, and to avoid using highbrow terminology. If you're writing for an educational publication in your field, however, you can write on a more focused level and use the specific terminology with which your readers are familiar.

Writers must know their audience in order to be able to discern whether they are writing down to a reader or writing over the readers' heads. And if writers find that they are writing for a publication over their own heads, they should seek simplicity. Certainly a writer should never pretend to know more than the readers. Not only is it poor form and bad manners, but such a writer may be more likely to use big words and long sentences in an effort to sound "in the know." This can backfire. The writer is likely to be found merely amusing or pretentious.

Back to RSCC OWL