Write in the right tone

By Linda Julian

Everything we write communicates a mixture of verbal and non-verbal meanings.  It can sometimes be quite challenging to convey a positive, efficient, yet reader-friendly tone in your writing.

"Tone" describes the "sound" of your writing  -  how it sounds to your reader.  Tone signals the kind of relationship you want to establish with your reader.  Your writing tone may convey trust and respect … without the words ever appearing in your text.  Examples of what we're talking about are:

• An urgent tone is signalled by imperative statements like "it is essential that …"
• An informal tone is conveyed with abbreviations and colloquialisms like "let's" and "you'll"
• A distrustful tone is signalled by overly polite phrases and excessive formality like "I must ask that you kindly …" and "please be good enough to ..."
• A negative tone is conveyed by bad news and criticism like "unfortunately," or "most regrettably ..."
• Self-importance and pomposity is the tone which is achieved through old-fashioned language such as "the abovementioned", "hereinbefore mentioned" or "I refer to your letter of 7th inst.".

So keep in mind that the next time you put "fingers to keyboard", your feelings are showing !