Identify a narrator's tone by analyzing specific word choices, and explain how changing those words would change the tone.
Tone is the writer's or narrator's attitude toward the subject, and it is built almost entirely out of word choice. The same basic facts can sound admiring, mocking, or matter-of-fact depending only on which words a writer picks. Learning to spot tone means learning to point at specific words and explain the attitude they carry, rather than just guessing a mood from a vague feeling.
Mark Twain's narrator in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is not neutral -- his tone toward the storyteller, Simon Wheeler, is gently mocking even while Twain clearly enjoys him. Twain signals this through word choice: Wheeler is "fat and bald-headed," has an expression of "winning gentleness and simplicity," and tells his long, rambling story with total seriousness, never once smiling at his own tall tale. The gap between Wheeler's dead-serious delivery and the absurdity of his story is where the humor -- and the tone -- lives.
Mastery looks like: They can point to specific word choices in a passage and explain exactly what attitude those words create, and can rewrite a neutral sentence to carry a different tone.
Common stumbles: Naming a tone with a single vague word ("it's funny") without pointing to the specific words responsible for that effect.
See it visually
Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.