As you’ve looked at all of these elements of style, you may have noticed that they share something. Because they are ways that an author presents his or her ideas, a reader can use them to see what the author’s or narrator’s feelings are toward the subject. This is what we call tone. In your study of literature, you will often be asked to analyze the author’s tone, and to do this, you will focus on the author’s stylistic choices.

You’ve probably heard the term tone before in the expression “tone of voice.” With your tone of voice, you can make what you say sound angry, happy, sarcastic, and so on. You use your tone of voice to indicate your attitude toward what you are saying. In writing, tone works very similarly. By looking carefully at language choices (style), we can pick up on the attitude that an author or a narrator takes toward his or her subject.

There are many possible ways to describe the author’s or narrator’s tone in a piece of literature. Here are just a few: