Well, I’m going to write the way I talk for this blog post. The decision to write the way you talk, or your choice of tone, depends on the context and purpose of the piece you are writing. Right here and now, my purpose is to reflect on the wide mysteries of our secret motives and natural instincts involved in expressing ourselves through writing. That means that you, the reader, are experiencing my thoughts as they surface in my head, without a whole lot of filtering. This isn’t normal for most academic writing, though. More on this in a little bit. Now I’m going to give you the “thesis” of sorts for this post: Your audience combined with your purpose determines the most appropriate tone for your writing.

First! The audience. The person or group of people that you expect will read your writing could change your mind about the tone you use (or, whether your writing voice resembles your talking voice). Your audience could be your friends, your professors, a room full of classmates, or your grandma. You already know that when you write a card to your grandma for her birthday, you’ll be using a different tone than when you write your best friend a birthday card. You might not be formal with your grandma, but you might at least use more proper language in her card and let yourself be more effusive with your language in your best friend’s card. In your grandma’s card, you’re less likely to write the way you normally talk than in your best friend’s card. (Unless, as my friend pointed out, your best friend is your grandma. If this is the case, congratulations. You win.) The purpose is the same, but because your audience is different, your written tone changes. It’s natural and appropriate for this to happen.

You can use your speaking tendencies to intuitively decide how you should write to your audience. Think about it this way: you would also probably use different language to talk to your grandma about, say, your day at school than you would if you were talking to your best friend. Your tone changes in speech just as it does in writing (linguistics calls this your register). So, one tip for deciding on a tone for a written piece is to ask yourself how you would talk in real life to the people that comprise your audience. In that sense, writing the way you talk can help you decide on your tone.

Secondly, the purpose of your writing can change your tone. If you’re making an argument in a paper that your professor will read, you’re more likely to use formal, overtly academic words that you don’t typically use when you speak. But if you’re writing a short reflection essay for your professor, you might slip into a more natural tone that is closer to your speaking voice.  In this example, the audience is the same, but the purpose of your writing changes your tone. Considering your audience and your purpose together helps you make an informed choice of tone.

PLEASE DO NOT MISTAKE ME. “Overtly academic” does not mean using words that make you sound like Archibald from Veggie Tales. Stuffiness does not equate to cleverness, but clarity is closer. All I mean to say is that academic writing requests that you use some specialized terms that may not be part of your everyday vocabulary. In your efforts to achieve an “academic tone,” don’t waste your good thoughts on thesaurized words and tangled sentence structures. Preserve them. Communicate them clearly.

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the introduction of this blog post that show what my choice of tone is. I told you already that you’re experiencing my thoughts, and that I’m writing the way I would talk to you. My audience is you, my fellow writer and peer. That means I can afford to have a friendly tone. I use personal pronouns to establish this, like “I” and “you,” and I address you directly. My purpose, which I already stated, is to reflect on some thoughts about tone in writing. Since these are my thoughts as they appear in my head, not all of them are complete sentences. For example, in the first paragraph I wrote,“More on this in a little bit” as a fragment. I also used informal language like “of sorts” and “a whole lot.” Informal language, fragmented sentences, and personal pronouns combine to create a conversational tone. That is appropriate for this blog post, because of the context I am writing in (my audience and purpose).

These elements aren’t appropriate choices for an academic paper, though. If I wrote my next research paper with fragments, personal pronouns, and phrases like “a whole lot,” my professor would probably dock me for incorrect grammar, wordiness, and he or she might think I wasn’t taking the assignment very seriously. Because the context changes, my tone also needs to change to fit the situation. I would need to use complete sentences that related logically to each other, eliminate personal pronouns, and choose words that were concise instead of vague (how are you supposed to know how much “a whole lot” is?). Those stylistic choices create a respectable, academic tone that professors are more likely to appreciate in a research paper.

Next time you write a paper, consider your context. Who are you writing to? How would you talk to them? What are you writing to them for? Use your answers to these questions to choose an appropriate tone. You can find more tips for choosing and accomplishing a suitable tone in this article from Walden University, and this one from Pressbooks.com.

Remember that this is a decision! Whether or not it is a conscious one, you make a choice about the tone of your writing. You are the writer. Recognizing your audience and your purpose and how they combine will help you intentionally choose an appropriate tone to use in conveying your ideas. This makes you an effective writer, attentive to your audience and firm in your purpose.

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Livia Swan is from just about everywhere, but she spent most of her childhood in Singapore. She is studying to be a Spanish teacher because she loves language – that’s also why she’s at the Writing Studio. There are a multitude of ways to use words to articulate one idea, even just within English. She is excited to read your ideas and help you represent your mind on the page so that your reader understands exactly the same thought that you mean to write down. When she’s not writing or reading (which, to be honest, isn’t very often), she’s baking or knitting or otherwise behaving like a grandma, and spending time with her best friends. She can’t wait to meet you! She’d love to learn how you use words and help you use them well.