SOME VERY COMMON TONES

1. Objective
2. Subjective
3. Neutral
4. Critical
5. Biased
6. Judgmental
7. Ironic
8. Sarcastic
9. Descriptive
10. Analytical
11. Explanatory
12. Laudatory
13. Eulogizing
14. Questioning
15. Investigative
16. Indifferent
SOME EXTREME TONES
(WHICH CAN BE ELIMINATED)

1. Harsh
2. Cynical
3. Pretentious
4. Scathing
5. Vituperative
6. Acrimonious
7. Bitter
8. Inimical
9. Pretentious
10. Mocking
11. Raucous
12. Acerbic
13. Biased
LEARN THESE DIFFICULT WORDS / TONES

Possible tone Meaning of the word

Acerbic Harsh/ severe; bitter
Aggressive Forceful; tending towards unprovoked offensiveness
Angry/indignant
Emotionless; not interested/ concerned; indifferent;
Apathetic
unresponsive
Expressing remorse, regret, sorrow for having failed,
Apologetic
injured, insulted or wronged another
Belligerent Aggressively hostile; bellicose
Favouring one thing/person/group over another for
Biased
personal reasons.
Caustic Biting; acerbic
Commiserating Feeling/ expressing sorrow for; empathizing with; pity
Patronizing; showing/implying patronising descent
Condescending
from dignity/ superiority
Contemptuous Expressing contempt/ disdain
displaying a belief that people are always self-seeking
Cynical
and never altruistic in their actions
Derisive Unkind and displaying contempt
Disparaging Speak slightingly; depreciating; belittling
 Asserting opinions in an arrogant manner; imperious;
Dogmatic
dictatorial
Easily affected by feelings actuated by experiencing
Emotional
love, hate, fear and the like
Ethical Dealing with principles of morality; honest; righteous
Substitution of mild, indirect or vague expression for
Euphemistic
one thought to be offensive, harsh or blunt
Grandiose More complicated/ elaborated than necessary; pompous
Evincing keen interest in human affairs, nature, welfare,
Humanistic
values
Humourous Funny and amusing
Introspective Consider one's own internal state of feelings
Incendiary Causing strong feelings
Laudatory Praising; extolling; applauding
Motivating Impelling; inciting
Fawning; showing servile complaisance; flattering;
Obsequious
deferent
Pedestrian Lacking vitality, imagination, distinction
Egalitarian; pertaining to the characteristics of common
Populist
people/ working class
Provocative Inciting; stimulating; irritating; vexing
Fanciful; impractical; unrealistic; extravagant;
Romantic
exaggerated
Sarcastic Harsh, bitter derision; taunting; sneering; cutting
 remarks
Ironical; taunting; human folly held up to scorn/
Satirical
derision/ ridicule
Theoretical rather than practical; thoughtful; reflective;
Speculative
hypothetical
Using terminology or treating subject matter in a
Technical manner peculiar to a particular field, as a writer or a
book
Vitriolic Full of anger and hatred
Vituperative Cruel and angry criticism
TYPES OF TONE QUESTIONS:

1. General tone
2. Specific-info tone
WHERE TO LOOK FOR THE TONE: (general tone)

1. Adjectives
2. Adverbs
3. Last four lines
Nearly 20 years ago, in speaking of her craft, the novelist Margaret Atwood observed that “a
character in a book who is consistently well behaved probably spells disaster for the book. “She
might have asserted the more general principle that consistent anything in a character can prove
tedious. If we apply the old Forsterian standard, that round characters are the ones, “capable of
surprising in a convincing way, “Atwood’s new novel, for all its multilayered story-within-a-story
construction, must be judged flat as a pancake. In The Blind Assassin, overlong and badly written,
our first impressions of the dramatis personae prove not so much lasting as total. The setup and
setting are promising enough.

1. The author finds Atwood’s style of writing

A. piercing and trenchant
B. feminist and racial
C. culture-centered and didactic
D. redundant and clogged
E. indoctrinating and pedantic
The promoters of New Towns so far in the United States have been developers, builders, and
financial institutions. The main interest of these promoters is economic gain. Furthermore, federal
regulations designed to promote the New Town idea do not consider social needs as the European
New Town plans do. In fact, our regulations specify virtually all the ingredients of the typical
suburban community, with a bit of political rhetoric thrown in.

2. The author’s tone in discussing “developers, builders, and financial institutions” can best be
described as

(A) critical
(B) pedantic
(C) evasive
(D) captious
(E) vitriolic
Beyond acting as frames of reference, hot spots apparently influence the geophysical processes that
propel the plates across the globe. When a continental plate comes to rest over a hot spot, material
welling up from deeper layers forms a broad dome that, as it grows, develops deep fissures. In some
instances, the continental plate may rupture entirely along some of the fissures so that the hot spot
initiates the formation of a new ocean. Thus, just as earlier theories have explained the mobility of
the continental plates, so hot-spot activity may suggest a theory to explain their mutability.

3. The author’s style can best be described as

(A) dramatic
(B) archaic
(C) esoteric
(D) objective
(E) humanistic
The making of classifications by literary historians can be a somewhat risky enterprise. When Black
poets are discussed separately as a group, for instance, the extent to which their work reflects the
development of poetry in general should not be forgotten, or a distortion of literary history may
result. This caution is particularly relevant in an assessment of the differences between Black poets
at the turn of the century (1900-1909) and those of the generation of the 1920’s. These differences
include the bolder and more forthright speech of the later generation and its technical inventiveness.
It should be remembered, though, that comparable differences also existed for similar generations of
White poets.

4. Which of the following best describes the attitude of the author toward classification as a
technique in literary history?

(A) Enthusiastic
(B) Indifferent
(C) Wary
(D) Derisive
(E) Defensive
Most paints, have body or pigment colours. In these, light is reflected from the surface without
much colour change, but the body material absorbs some colours and reflects others; hence, the
diffused reflection from the body of the material is coloured but often appears to be overlaid and
diluted with a “white” reflection from the glossy surface of the paint film. In paints and enamels,
the pigment particles, which are usually opaque, are suspended in a vehicle such as oil or plastic.
The particles of a dye, on the other hand, are considerably finer and may be described as
colouring matter in solution. The dye particles are more often transparent or translucent.

5. In form and style, the passage can best be described as:

A. An objective presentation
B. A biased exposition
C. A tentative hypothesis
D. An ambivalent portrayal
E. A flawed synopsis
Laura dies and leaves behind a science fiction novel, The Blind assassin, which becomes a great
posthumous success. Atwood’s enveloping novel of the same name fails to keep up. Atwood
lengthily taxonomizes the city of SakielNorn and its class-stratified inhabitants. But she proves
unable to relieve the reader’s tedium with the place’s kinkier features, like children who weave
carpets until they are blind and then go on to become throat-cutting hired killers. Despite her
assertion in a recent interview that this new book’s fantasy material has its roots in popular prewar
genre magazines, Atwood seems to be sleepwalking through a Doris Lessing phase, or exercising
once again her own allegorical bent, most famously displayed in “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

6. The critic’s attitude toward Atwood’s ‘The Blind Assassin’ is one of

A. pointed criticism
B. unbiased approval
C. obvious indifference
D. objective admiration
E. scrupulous betrayal
Eugenics, Dean Inge writes in one of his essays, is capable of becoming the most sacred ideal of
the human race, as a race; one of the supreme religious duties. In this I entirely agree with him.
Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become
part of the religion of the future, or of what every complex of sentiments may in the future take
the place of organized religion. It is not merely a sane outlet for human altruism, but is of all
outlets for altruism that which is most comprehensive and of longest range.

However, in addition to holding out these emotional possibilities, the eugenic movement must
obey practical necessities.
At the moment, it is idle to pretend that it had advanced very far in either direction. True that to a
limited number of men and women, it is already an inspiring ideal: but for the bulk of people, if
not a subject for a jest, it remains either mistrusted or wholly neglected.

It may be that, as a scientist myself, I overrate the importance of the scientific side. At any rate, it
is my conviction that eugenics cannot gain power as an ideal and a motive until it has improved
its position as a body of knowledge and a potential instrument of control;

Eugenics falls within the province of the social sciences, not of the natural sciences.
Personally, I do not think that this criticism is justified.

This, however, is not all. The social sciences in certain respects differ radically from the natural
sciences;

But the social scientist cannot do this sort of thing: he can at the best find a correlation between
several variables.

And, of course, the inevitable obverse of the principle of multiple causes is the principle of
multiple effect. I need not labour the point, save to stress the need for the working out of suitable
methods, of partial correlation and the like, to deal with this multiple complexities.

7. The tone of the passage can best be described as

A. argumentative
B. non-committal
C. hortatory
D. enthusiastic
E. moralistic
Such characteristics are said to be polygenetic: that is, under the influence of two or more genes.
This is why it is impossible to predict exactly what a new baby will look like, or how it will grow to
adulthood, simply by looking at its parents. If the mother has blue eyes and the father has brown, the
offspring will not have one eye of each colour, but probably either brown or blue, or perhaps even
green, depending on how the recessive and dominant genes match up in its chromosomes. If mother
is tall while father is short, the chances are that the offspring will be in between; but he or she might
be very well end up taller than either parent, or shorter than both, even without any environmental
influence on growth, because of the polygenetic influence of many genes working together to
determine the phenotype. Of course, we may say that a boy ‘has his father’s nose’, or that a girl’s
eyes are ‘just like her grandfather’s; even within your own family you can see the inheritability of
characteristics. But you cannot predict in advance that one, or any, of your own children will have
your nose or their grandmother’s hair. Control genes guide our development from conception to
maturity, and ensure that we develop as members of Homo sapiens, not as horses or pigs.

8. The tone of the passage may be classified as —

1) Researching
2) Didactic
3) Factual
4) Critical
The first management theorist to emphasize the importance of marketing, German-born Levitt, who
has been associated with Harvard Business School for over thirty years, is unusual in having
established his reputation as a guru on the basis of single article – ‘Marketing Myopia’, published in
the Harvard Business Review in the summer of 1960. It has since sold more than 500,000 reprinted
copies.

In this extraordinarily influential article, Levitt argued powerfully that ‘an industry is a customer-
satisfying process, not a goods-producing process.’ Levitt can claim to have had more articles
published in the Harvard Business Review than any other guru.

Like other gurus, notably Kenichi Ohmae, Levitt has recently diversified into the subject of the
global market place and ‘global branding.’

Levitt’s views of his own influence is modest.

Today marketing is no longer, as Levitt called it in 1960, a ‘stepchild.’ Getting and staying close to
the customer was enshrined by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence as a
prime component of the top-performing company. But that was in 1982. More than twenty years
earlier, the idea was sufficiently novel for Levitt’s Harvard Business Review article to start an
earthquake in management thinking.

9. The tone of the passage towards Levitt is

1) Critical
2) Neutral
3) Investigating
4) Extolling
A computer researcher in conversation with a journalist reveals that his area of research is ‘artificial
intelligence’. The journalist expresses some scepticism about this; intelligence seems to be
something beyond the scientist’s domain, part of the mysterious machinations of the mind. ‘What’,
replies the researcher, used to such arguments, ‘is so special about the mind?’ Mind, the ‘secret
working mind’, as Yeats called it; surely it does not need to prove itself special? It is the origin of
our identity, of our consciousness, of our lives.
Science, as we have already discovered, is outrageously demanding.

There has, however, been one region of doubt, one part of the universe that, perhaps does not obey
any such laws.
Cartesian dualism came under the most convincing – and entertaining – assault in 1949 by the
Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle.

A categorical mistake is usually just a simple error, but one that can be hard to detect and correct.

As we saw earlier with the case of personal computing, our lives are filled with people making
category mistakes.
The important point about Ryles’s argument and work by psychologists such as Skinner was that
they dragged the mind out from behind the veil of dualism into the domain of scientific reality.

10. The tone of the passage can be best described as :-

1) Contemplative
2) Derisive
3) Critical
4) Facetious