Striking the Right Tone
As a Web writer, one of your most important tasks is to construct the right tone to convince your audience that material presented on your site is true, credible and worthwhile. The tone conveys the attitude the content provider has toward its audience – objective, professional, warm and inviting, cool, etc. For example, if you describe a newly constructed academic building as, “It’s a really cool building that students most definitely like hanging out in,” you’ve most likely alienated the chunk of your audience concerned with getting the most of $40,000 in tuition.
Finding a tone your primary audiences will all respond to positively will help your Web site reach its goals.
Understanding the appropriate tone is the first step in being able to write in the appropriate tone. Consider the following:
- Example #1
History at Northeastern emphasizes both the study of national and regional histories and the global intersections of nations, regions, and cultures. Faculty research and teaching focus on Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, Russia and the Soviet Union, the British Atlantic world, the Middle East, and on the histories of race, imperialism and colonialism, violence and war, women and gender, the environment and public history.
Students in the History major work closely with research faculty to develop a critical understanding of the past, and to hone their intellectual and analytical skills. Northeastern University history majors have gone on to pursue careers in law, university and college teaching and scholarship, secondary school education, journalism, government agencies, and in public history as film-makers, archivists and administrators of historical sites.
- Example #2:
History at Northeastern is not an out-of-date discipline with few connections to the real world. You’ll meet faculty who have studied every culture you can think of. Become an NU history major and, you never know - you may find yourself as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times or Ken Burns’ assistant on his latest project.
Don’t let your parents and friends talk you out of majoring history. It’s not just about taking dust-covered tomes off the library shelves to find out what happened in some foreign land thousands of years ago. It’s about understanding the context that today’s world has sprung from.
The tone of the first example is cool, professional, yet not alienating. The tone of the second is chummy and casual, and the message alienates parents, which comprise a key segment of the history department's audience. Because the tone of the first passage is welcoming to a greater portion of the history department's target audience, the text is more effective for the Web.
Exercise
Striking the Right Tone
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