1. Tone, Mood, and Voice In Academic Writing

2. The Five Paragraph Theme is Dead
The rhetorical triangle has taken its place. Balancing ethos, pathos, and logos requires us to master our sense of tone and mood. Voice can give credibility, manage why they care, and foster trust in the argument.

3. Two Components of Voice: Tone and Mood

4. Tone
Tone: the writer's attitude toward the audience. Tone may be described as playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.

5. Tone reveals the assumptions an author makes about their audience as they write to them.
As we all know, those who oppose recycling are willfully uneducated.

6. So What is Mood?
Your mood is your attitude about the subject you write about.

7. Of course, teachers have one thing right, at least
Of course, teachers have one thing right, at least. How does this sarcastic author feel about her subject, teachers? That’s her mood.

8. Quick Comparison Recap
Mood: Writer’s attitude about subject being discussed.
Tone:
Writer’s attitude about audience being written to.

9. So What’s Voice, Then?
Voice is the author's overall style, the quality that makes his or her writing unique, and which conveys the author's attitude, personality, and character.

10. Tone + Mood = Voice

11. Identify the tone and mood in the opening line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

12. Capote exhibited tone and mood in this sample of his voice: [Holcomb is] a haphazard hamlet bounded on the south by a brown stretch of the Arkansas (pronounced “Ar-kan-sas”) River (Capote 3).

13. What’s the Tone. Mood. Thanks for coming to class today, Jerome
What’s the Tone? Mood? Thanks for coming to class today, Jerome. If he’s late? If last time something bad happened? If he’s a guest speaker?

14. Tone and Mood Practice Worksheet