Is your content missing a certain something, but you can’t quite put your finger on what? Does it feel dull and lifeless, or perhaps stilted and forced?
If so, the issue might lie with your content’s tone.
The meaning of “tone” in a writing context is similar to what we mean when we talk about speaking tone: it’s the overall emotion and attitude something is said with. If you’re writing B2C beauty content, you may want a tone that’s playful and casual. If you’re writing B2B medical content, you’ll likely want a tone that’s precise and academic.
Tone is a tricky concept to learn and an even trickier one to master, but there are a few strategies you can fall back on to tweak your tone until your writing is just right. In this post, I’ll give you an overview of some of the things I like to do when adjusting a piece of content’s tone.
Experiment with Word Choice
English has a lot of words. There’s a synonym for nearly everything. While that can be daunting at times, it can also help you change your tone without changing the literal meaning of what you’ve written.
Consider the following examples, and think about how the tones of each differ:
-The digital transformation can launch your business toward new levels of success.
-The digital transformation can catapult your company toward new heights.
-The digital transformation can advance your organization toward new achievements.
Each one says the same thing, but switching out just a few words has given each one a different tone.
- The first one is straightforward and direct. The vivid verb “launch” injects some energy into the sentence, but the rest of the word choice is pretty standard, giving the sentence a respectable, businesslike tone.
- The second sentence is a little snappier. “Catapult” is a more creative verb, and using it in combination with “heights” creates an image of something flying upwards. “Catapult your company” is also an alliteration, which makes the sentence a little playful.
- The third sentence is more reserved. “Advance” is a much more subdued verb; “achievements” is likewise mild. “Organization” is a longer and clunkier but more professional term than “business” or “company.”
If you want your content to be more academic and serious, you can try selecting words that are longer or that have more subdued connotations. If, on the other hand, you want to add more energy to your writing, try using words that are shorter, more creative, and/or more vivid. It’ll likely take some trial and error to land on exactly the right word choice, but there’s no shame in occasionally pulling out a thesaurus.
Use More Active Voice
Now it’s time for a quick grammar lesson. I’m going to go over two approaches to sentence construction that significantly impact tone: active voice and passive voice.
Active voice is the term for when the subject of the sentence performs an action. Passive voice, by contrast, is when an action is done to the subject of the sentence.
The easiest way to understand this is to look at some examples:
Active voice: Greg threw the ball.
Passive voice: The ball was thrown.
Active voice: My cat ate my dinner.
Passive voice: My dinner was eaten by my cat.
Active voice: The teacher assigned essays to the older students and crafts to the younger students.
Passive voice: Essays were assigned to the older students, and crafts were assigned to the younger students.
In all of the active voice examples above, the subject of the sentence—the person or thing the sentence is about—was doing something. In all of the passive voice examples, the subject of the sentence had something done to it.
If you think the tone of your content is lacking energy, one quick and simple fix is to go through the piece and replace instances of passive voice with active voice. This works because active voice, as the name suggests, implies activity and energy. Passive voice tends to make a piece feel slower, duller, or more detached.
No writing rule is unbreakable, and the occasional passive voice can be useful if you want a calmer or more objective tone. It may also be more appropriate for specific types of content, especially in technical or scientific fields.
But if you’re looking for a good writing rule of thumb, one of the best is to use active voice as much as possible.
Think About Your Sentence Structure
Now for the trickiest — but possibly most important — aspect of tone: sentence structure.
English is a funny language in that it’s extremely flexible when it comes to how our sentences can be structured.
To illustrate this, here are a few different ways I could have structured the sentence above:
- When it comes to how our sentences can be structured, English is a funny language in that it’s extremely flexible.
- When it comes to of how our sentences can be structured, English is extremely flexible, which makes it a funny language.
- English is extremely flexible when it comes to how our sentences can be structured; it’s a funny language that way.
- Extremely flexible, English is a funny language when it comes to how our sentences can be structured.
- English if a funny language — when it comes to how our sentences can be structured, it’s extremely flexible.
While some of these sentences read better than others, they’re all grammatically correct. So, how do you choose what sentence structure to use?
The most important thing is to always vary your sentence structure. If you have a couple long sentences in a row, make the next one short; if you have a lot of short sentences, try to add a longer one. When sentence structure is repetitive, the reader gets bored, so variety is key for an engaging tone.
As you go about varying your sentence structure, here are a few other tips to keep in mind:
- Short, simple sentences tend to have more energy.
- Long sentences with multiple parts to them can create a more academic or sophisticated tone.
- Punctuation matters. Commas can make a reader slow down and control how they understand a sentence. Colons and semi-colons sometimes make a piece come across as more academic because those punctuation marks aren’t often used in casual writing. By contrast, dashes can give a piece a more casual, lively tone. (Dashes are also a great grammatical cheat — they let you combine ideas without worrying too much about sentence structure. (See?))
This can be too much to think about while writing your first draft. But when rereading and editing something you’ve written, these tips can help you diagnose why your tone may feel off.
Finally, one of the best ways to perfect your sentence structure is to read your piece aloud. People naturally vary their sentences as they speak, so reading a piece aloud will help you find areas where your content sounds awkward, repetitive, or confusing.
Tone can be a complicated thing to master, but there are a few simple cheats you can use to get your content closer to your vision and better able to connect with your audience. And if you need something more in-depth than simple cheats, remember that you can always hire a professional!
Nicole D'Angelo 