Answer:
When thinking about proper diction, an author should consider three main categories: tone, mood, and audience.
Audience refers to who will be reading the work. Authors tend to write to a particular audience, whether kids, or young adults, or specialist within a field. The audience can affect the mood and tone of the writing because different audiences have different expectations.
Tone refers to the author’s attitude—how they feel about their subject and their readers. It expresses something of the author’s persona, the aspects of their personality they wish to show to their readers. For example, are they being funny or serious? Are they writing with fondness or with derision?
Mood refers to the overall atmosphere or feeling of a piece of writing. It is often closely related to tone, because the author’s attitude influences the overall feeling of a text. It’s difficult, for instance, to take a jovial tone if the overall mood of the piece ought to be somber, or vice versa. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë would be far less effective as a gothic text if its spooky atmosphere was interrupted by witty, sarcastic commentary in the style of Jane Austen.
Take, for example, this quote from Wuthering Heights:
“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you—haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
