Tone:
• Whatever leads us to infer the author’s attitude.
• Author’s choice of details, characters, events and situations, and choice of words lead us to infer his or her attitude.
• Tone may communicate amusement, anger, affection, sorrow, contempt.
• To understand tone is to understand some attitude more fundamental to the story than whatever attitude the characters explicitly declare.
Style:
• One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written.
• style refers to the individual traits or characteristics of a piece of writing, a writer’s way of managing words that we come to recognize.
• Style indicates a mode of expression: the language a writer uses.
• Traits of style:
o length and complexity of sentences
o diction: choice of words (abstract , concrete, bookish, close to speech, etc.)
o habitual use of imagery, patterns of sound, figures of speech, other devices.
Minimalists:
• written with flat, laid-back, unemotional tone, in a bare, unadorned style.