Tone, Mood, and Authorial Voice

Three closely related terms—tone, mood, and voice—describe the felt quality of a text. Students often blur them, but keeping them distinct sharpens analysis considerably. In brief: tone is the writer's attitude, mood is the reader's feeling, and voice is the writer's distinctive verbal identity. This lesson defines each, shows how writers create them, and explains how they interact.

Tone: the writer's attitude

Tone is the attitude a text takes toward its subject or audience. A text can be affectionate, contemptuous, nostalgic, ironic, clinical, playful, or grave. Tone is produced by choices: word selection, sentence rhythm, imagery, and especially diction (the specific words chosen). Describing a politician's speech as "a torrent of promises" is more contemptuous than calling it "a detaile