Tone and Style

ToneTone- the author’s attitude toward events and

characters. This may be opposite to what the characters espouse. (Consider the tone toward the unreliable narrators in Poe stories.) Tone is revealed by the author’s choice of details, characters, events, and situations and choice of words. All of these elements contribute to the tone of a story.

StyleStyle- refers to the individual traits or

characteristics of a piece of writing and to a writer's particular ways of managing words that we come to recognize as habitual or customary. A writer’s style is often so distinctive one can distinguish their work from any other.

Diction – the choice of words, abstract or concrete , bookish or close to conversational speech, in the narrative

IronyA literary device in which a discrepancy of

meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language Irony is present when a writer says one thing but means something quite the opposite.

Types of ironyDramatic Irony- irony which occurs when the

reader understands the implication and meaning of a situation and may foresee the oncoming disaster or triumph while the character does not.

Verbal Irony – a statement in which the speaker or writer says the opposite of what is really meant.

Sarcasm- a conspicuously bitter form of irony in which the ironic statement is designed to hurt or mock its target

Hemingway’s StyleIncludes both short and long sentences but they

tend to be relatively simple in constructionHemingway often uses compound sentences

with a pattern of clause plus clause plus clause joined by “and’s”. The effect is like listening to speech.

Hemingway is a master of swift terse dialogue, and often casts whole scenes in the form of conversation. Many times the narrator addresses us in understatement implying greater depths of feeling than he puts into words.

Hemingway

FaulknerEmploys a style in which “ A statement as soon

as it is uttered is followed by another statement expressing the idea in a more emphatic way. Sentences are interrupted with parenthetical elements (asides) thrust into them unexpectedly. At times Faulkner writes of seemingly ordinary matters as if giving speech in a tower of passion.”

Source:Glau, Gregory R., Barry M. Maid, and Duane

Roen. The McGraw-Hill Guide Writing for College, Writing for Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.