Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

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S T Y L E : I T ’ S N O T W H AT T H E Y S AY B U T H O W T H E Y S AY I T
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As you come across sentences or paragraphs written in different styles, see how they would sound if
the style were altered. Change the level of formality, the degree of description and detail, or the sen-
tence structure to create a new style.
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Do you have a favorite author? Take a second look at a particularly memorable work by this author, pay-
ing close attention to the style elements at work. If you are a Jane Austen fan, pick out features that
make her novels enjoyable for you. Do you like her degree of formality, the way she uses detail to
describe fancy parties, or the way she varies her sentence structure? After you’ve taken a close look
at this work, try your own hand at it. Can you write a letter to a friend in the same style that Jane Austen
would have? How about Ernest Hemingway or Stephen King?
Skill Building until Next Time

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S
ay this word out loud: “Sure.”
How did you say it? Did you say it with a smile, as in “Sure, anytime”? Or did you say it flatly,
as if responding to a command? Or did you stretch the word out, “Suuuurre,” as if you didn’t believe
what someone just said? Or did you ask it, as in, “Are you sure this is okay?”
Perhaps you didn’t realize there were so many ways to say this one single word, “sure.” But there are. Why?
The word itself isn’t different; its denotation (dictionary meaning) isn’t different; so how can the same word express
so many different things?
The difference in the meaning of all these sures comes from the tone—how you say the word, and thus how
your listeners will feel when they hear you say it.
L E S S O N
How They Say It,
Part Two: Tone