you behavior while attending church is different from your behavior while hanging out in the back yard with friends, or at least we hope it is. And part of that difference is the difference in language, a difference not just in the words, we were very young, not to "use that tone of voice with me, Mister (or Missy, as the case may be) " Just as the pitch and pitch and volume of one's voice carry a difference in tone from street to church to church, the choice of words and the way we put our sentences together a sense of tone in our writing. The tone, in turn, conveys our attitude toward our audience and our subject matter. Are we being frivolous or serious, casual or formal, sweet or formal, sweet or stuffy? The choice of a single word can change the tone of a paragraph, even an entire assay. In the sentence of this paragraph, for example, the phrasal verb "hanging out" is considerably more casual than others we might have chosen: gathering congregating, assembling.