s4h-writing-tone-alignment

Writing: Tone Alignment

Tone drift is what happens when a piece moves through multiple registers without intention — formal to casual, warm to clinical, urgent to contemplative — destroying the reader's sense of who is speaking. The reader cannot trust a voice they cannot locate. When they feel the voice shift, they become aware they are reading a document rather than inhabiting a communication. The intimacy, or the authority, or the momentum — whatever the piece was building — dissolves.

Tone drift is most common in three situations: multi-author documents, where different contributors have different natural voices; long pieces written over time, where the writer's mood, energy, or approach has changed between sessions; and pieces assembled from different source material, where the register of the sources bleeds into the synthesis.

Tone has multiple dimensions, and they can drift independently:

• Formality: Where on the formal/informal spectrum? Legal prose to text message — everything between is possible, but the piece should occupy a consistent bandwidth.
• Warmth: Where on the cold-to-warm spectrum? Institutional distance to personal intimacy?
• Urgency: Is the piece pressing forward, or is it contemplative and spacious?
• Stance toward the reader: Does it treat the reader as a peer, a student, a customer, a collaborator, a stranger?
• Sentence rhythm: Short and punchy, or long and periodic? The rhythm carries register even when the words don't shift.

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Your Process

Step 1: Intended Tone What tone was intended? If it's not stated, extract it from the strongest passage in the piece — the section that works best is the baseline. State the intended tone precisely across all five dimensions: formality level / warmth level / urgency / stance toward reader / sentence rhythm.

Framing check: Confirm the piece and its intended register before continuing. State what you've identified — the specific text being analysed and the baseline tone you've extracted — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

• Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the piece and its intended tone]. Is that right?"
• Header: "Framing"
• Options:
  • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
  • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
  • Reframe — different situation than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding

Step 2: Scan for Departures Read through the piece and flag sections where any of the five tone dimensions shifts from the baseline. Don't just flag "informal" or "formal" — be specific: "this section shifts from 'collegial peer' to 'authoritative expert'"; "this paragraph breaks from short declarative sentences into subordinate clause-heavy long sentences that slow the pace and change the register."

Step 3: Diagnose the Cause For each departure, what produced it?

• Source bleed: The tone of a cited source or reference has leaked into the prose
• Multi-author drift: A different contributor's natural voice
• Energy change: Written in a different session, different mood, different urgency
• Register confusion: The writer shifted their mental audience for this section
• Functional shift: The section is doing something different (explaining vs. persuading vs. narrating) and the register shifted with the function without awareness

Understanding the cause determines the correction.

Step 4: Prescribe Corrections For each flagged section: what specific changes bring it into alignment? This may involve vocabulary choices ("synergistic" → "works well together"), sentence length adjustments, the removal of hedging language, or the addition of warmth. Be specific — "make it more casual" is not actionable; "replace the three nominalisations in this paragraph and cut the passive construction in the final sentence" is.

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Human Check-in

Before proceeding, use the AskUserQuestion tool. State your interpretation of the situation in 1–2 sentences — what is being analyzed and what the core question is — then ask:

• Question: "My read: [your 1–2 sentence interpretation]. How do you want to proceed?"
• Header: "Scope"
• Options:
  • Full analysis — Complete all steps, reasoning shown throughout
  • Key findings only — Bottom-line output, skip step-by-step detail
  • Specific focus — Zoom in on one aspect of this analysis
  • Reframe — The read is off; correct it and the analysis will follow the corrected framing

Proceed based on their selection. If the user reframes, incorporate the correction before running any analysis.

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Output Format

Tone Audit

Intended Tone:

• Formality: [X/10, characterised]
• Warmth: [X/10, characterised]
• Urgency: [paced characterisation]
• Stance toward reader: [peer / student / customer / etc.]
• Sentence rhythm: [characterised]

Flagged Departures:

• [Location] — [Quoted passage] — Dimension shifted: [formality / warmth / urgency / stance / rhythm] — Direction of drift: [toward formal / toward casual / etc.]
• [Repeat for each]
• NONE FOUND if clean

Cause Diagnoses: [Per departure: source bleed / multi-author drift / energy change / register confusion / functional shift]

Correction Prescriptions: [Per departure: specific changes — vocabulary, sentence structure, register adjustments]

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Notes

• Tone drift is different from intentional register shift. Some pieces move between registers deliberately — a piece that shifts from formal analysis to personal reflection is doing something intentional. The question is whether the shift is marked and controlled, or whether it just happens.
• Tone drift is most damaging at openings: if the first two paragraphs are not tonally consistent with each other, the reader never establishes their footing.
• Pairs with /s4h-writing-voice-consistency — voice is the who speaking; tone is the how. They are related but distinct. Voice consistency asks "does this sound like the same person?"; tone alignment asks "is that person speaking in a consistent register?"
• Pairs with /s4h-writing-audience-calibration — tone is part of calibration; a piece can be tonally consistent but calibrated to the wrong audience entirely.
• Pairs with /s4h-writing-line-editing — many tone corrections happen at the sentence level (word choice, sentence structure), so the two tools often work together.

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What's Next

After delivering this output, use AskUserQuestion to offer the next move:

• Question: "Tone aligned. What's next?"
• Header: "Next"
• Options:
  • /s4h-writing-voice-consistency — Check voice consistency after tone alignment
  • /s4h-writing-line-editing — Edit for the aligned tone
  • /s4h-writing-audience-calibration — Verify tone serves the audience
  • Done — Wrap up and synthesise what we have so far