Denotative and Connotative

Words are not limited to one single meaning. Most words have multiple
meanings, which are categorized as either denotative or connotative. The
denotation of a word is its explicit definition as listed in a dictionary.
Let’s use the word “home” as an example. The denotative or literal
meaning of “home” is “ a place where one lives; a residence.” Hint:
Denotation, denotative, definition, and dictionary all start with the letter
‘D.
The expressiveness of language, however, comes from the other type of
word meaning—connotation, or the association or set of associations that
a word usually brings to mind . The connotative meaning of “home” is a
place of security, comfort, and family. When Dorothy in The Wizard of
Oz says, “There’s no place like home,” she’s not referring to its
denotation, but the emotions “home” evokes for her and most people.
Connotation Determines Use
The connotative and denotative meanings of words are both correct, but a
word’s connotation determines when it is used. By definition, synonyms
have the same denotation or literal meaning, but almost always have
different connotations, or shades of meaning. For example, the synonyms
of “boat” include ship, yacht, dinghy, and ferry. All these words refer to
the same thing, but each elicits a different association in the reader’s
mind.
Connotative and Denotative Vocabulary Exercises
Connotative and denotative vocabulary exercises test your understanding
of how word choice affects the meaning of what you say and write. A
quiz may ask you to select words or write sentences that convey positive,
neutral, or negative connotations. For example, notice how the sentence
meaning shifts when the underlined word is changed:
Positive: Sally was an enthusiastic member her sorority.
Neutral: Sally was an active member of her sorority.
Negative: Sally was a fanatical member of her sorority.
Shades of Meaning Activities
Create your own connotative, or shades if meaning, activity worksheet.
Make three columns on a sheet of paper with the headings “positive,”
“neutral,” and “negative.” Select a paragraph from a reading assignment
and record words of differing connotation. Next, rewrite sentences from
the paragraph, substituting synonyms that have different connotations.
Observe how the intent of each sentence changes.
Political Correctness
The main lesson: Always consider a word’s denotation and connotation if
you want to avoid misinterpretation. In recent years, “political
correctness” has swept through the English language, due to our
increased sensitivity to negative connotations. While some ridicule it as
being “PC,” expressions such as “differently-abled” (instead of
“crippled”) have had a positive effect on society.

Homograph/Homophone/Homonym

A homograph is a word that has the same spelling as another word

but has a different sound and a different meaning:
lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal)
wind (to follow a course that is not straight)/wind (a gust of air)
bass (low, deep sound)/bass (a type of fish)
A homophone is a word that has the same sound as another
word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning:
to/two/too
there/their/they're
pray/prey
Not so bad, right? The ending –graph means drawn or written,
so a homograph has the same spelling. The –phone ending
means sound or voice, so a homophone has the same
pronunciation. But here's where it gets tricky. Depending on
whom you talk to, homonym means either:
A word that is spelled like another but has a different sound and
meaning (homograph); a word that sounds like another but has a
different spelling and meaning (homophone)
OR
A word that is spelled and pronounced like another but has a
different meaning (homograph and homophone)
So does a homonym have to be both a homograph and a
homophone, or can it be just one or the other? As with most
things in life, it depends on whom you ask.
In the strictest sense, a homonym must be both a homograph
and a homophone. So say many dictionaries. However, other
dictionaries allow that a homonym can be a homograph or a
homophone.
With so many notable resources pointing to the contrary, are
we losing this strict meaning? What then will we call a word that
is spelled and pronounced the same as another but has a
different meaning? If homonym retains all these meanings, how
will readers know what is actually meant?
The careful writer would do well to follow the strict sense,
ensuring his meaning is understood immediately.

Common errors

1. “Its” and “It’s” are two different words. The former is a possessive,
meaning it shows that one thing belongs to another. The latter is a
shortened form of “it is.” Incidentally, contractions, such as it’s, they’re,
and I’d, are perfectly fine for informal writing and are becoming more
acceptable in formal writing. To be cautious, however, you may want to
write out the longer form of what you want to say.
2. “They’re,” “their,” and “there” are also different words. The first
means “they are,” the second means “belonging to them,” and the third
means “that place away from here.” The same goes for “you’re” (you are)
and “your” (belonging to you).
3. Avoid using “they” and “their” when talking about one person.
The grammar rule that applies here is that all the nouns, verbs, and
pronouns in your sentence have to agree. In other words, if one is plural,
they all should be. Most people remember this rule from English class
(even if they failed to pay attention), but misusing “their” has become a
popular solution to the problem of offending someone by saying “his”
whenever a person’s gender is unknown. Instead of saying, “Each person
submits their own time card,” it is correct to say “Each person submits his
or her own time card.” Using “his or her” does get awkward in longer
documents, so it is better to reword the sentence to avoid the pronoun:
“Each person submits a time card” or (where accurate) to make other
nouns and verbs plural: “The people all submit their own time cards.”
4. Simple plurals do not require an apostrophe. This rule is basic but
frequently broken. How often do you see a sign on a house that says,
“The Brown’s?” If the Browns live there, it should either read “The
Browns” (a label) or “The Browns'” (short for “The Browns’ house”).
Products for sale often violate this apostrophe rule, so an apostrophe
within a plural is sometimes called “the greengrocer’s apostrophe.”
“Apple’s for sale” is grammatically incorrect. The phrase needs to lose an
apostrophe or gain a possession: “Apples for sale” or “Apple’s core for
sale.”
5. Quotation marks are needed less often than you might expect. In
general, they should be used for quotations (the exact words someone
said), direct references to a phrase, word, or letter (the letter “s”) and
irony or euphemisms (she was “sick” on that sunny day when she missed
work). A sign that misuses quotation marks (“Apples” for sale) suggests
that those apples aren’t really apples but something else that looks like
them.
6. A complete sentence requires a subject and a main verb. Somebody
does something. If you are missing a subject or a main verb, you have a
phrase. A phrase should not have a period at the end of it. “Submitting
my work” is a phrase. “I am submitting my work” is a sentence.
7. Job titles should not be capitalized unless they are used directly
before a name, as part of the name. Capitalized job titles are so
common that when you start writing them correctly, with lowercase
letters, you can almost be certain someone will tell you it is wrong. A few
exceptions do exist (such as the President of the United States of
America), but most titles used in sentences should be written like this:
“The president of XYZ Company spoke today.” If you say, “XYZ
Company President Xavier Y. Zelinsky spoke today,” the title is
appropriately capitalized.
8. “This” should nearly always be followed by a noun. Frequently,
after describing a complex idea, writers will say something like, “This is
not what we want.” Sometimes it is clear what “this” means, but usually
the previous sentences have so many nouns that the reference is too vague
to be useful. It could mean “this concept is not what we want” or “this
effect is not what we want” or even “this color is not what we want.”
Specify what you mean by adding a noun after every “this.”
9. Avoid overusing passive voice. “Mistakes were made” is not much of
an apology because it does not accept responsibility. “I made a mistake”
is much better grammatically. To discover how often you use passive
voice, search your document for the words “are,” “were,” “was,” and
“is.” If any of these sentences include the word “by” or could include it
(“Mistakes were made by both of us”), they are written in passive voice.
Rewrite each sentence so that the subject takes responsibility for the
action. Passive voice does have a few legitimate uses, such as when the
person or thing responsible for an action is unknown or irrelevant, but
many mediocre writers use – and overuse – passive voice without cause.
10. Spelling counts. At least one cash register has a sign beside it that
says, “No checks excepted.” That sign suggests that the business will take
any check you write – it makes no exceptions. What the owners really
meant to say is “No checks accepted.” This example is just one of many
where the meaning of our written language can be completely changed by
one mistake.
Do run your computer’s spelling and grammar checks, but don’t count on
them to keep your writing error free. Sometimes these tools miss spelling
errors or tell you that your grammar is wrong when it is not. If writing is
not your strength, ask someone who paid attention in English class to
proofread your business writing. Better yet, brush up on your written
language skills by reading a book or two on the subject. Many, such as
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, make English more interesting
to those who aren’t naturally fascinated by words and sentence structures.
 Improving Tone

Few of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the tone of your
writing.
1. AVOID A PREDICTABLE TREATMENT OF YOUR SUBJECT.
In the first draft you write what people expect you to write—what you
expect yourself to write. “I wanted a car.” The tone becomes predictable.
Now, during your revision, go deeper. Seek out the harder truths. It’s in
the second, third, fourth draft that you say something we don’t expect you
to say, something even you didn’t expect you to say. When you get tired
of being nice. “I wanted a car so I could drive out of my marriage.”
Surprise yourself, and you will surprise your reader.
Similarly, you’ll want to avoid taking an overly emotional approach to an
overly emotional subject. Think of the dry, reserved tone in which Joan
Didion recalls the anguish of losing her husband in The Year of Magical
Thinking. What if she had wailed about her loss? There would be nothing
for us readers to do, even if the emotions being reported to us were very
sad. (Note: If you’re having a hard time distancing yourself from the raw
emotion of a personal subject, this may be a sign that you need to let time
do its magic work. Frank McCourt said it took him years before he could
detach from his anger toward his feckless father enough to give Angela’s
Ashes its nonjudgmental tone. When something bad happens, of course
we feel upset, even as if life has treated us unfairly—but that’s not a great
place to write from. Let the experience ripen in your memory until you’ve
achieved the distance you need.)
If your subject is inherently serious, try taking a lighter approach. What’s
Your Poo Telling You? came to Chronicle Books as a serious examination
of—well, you know. In that form, it might have sold a few thousand
copies. The lighter treatment led to sales of hundreds of thousands of
copies. There’s no denying that titles with tone sell books: Consider My
Miserable, Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy or Skinny Bitch.
2. KEEP TONE CONSISTENT FROM START TO FINISH.
Make sure your very first sentence establishes the tone you want. Look at
the opening line of “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara:
Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish
and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our
block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup.
In one sentence, you know who everybody is. Not only do you want to
read on, but you want to know what else she’s written so you can get that,
too.
You will choose different tones for different subjects, of course, just as
you would dress differently for a date than for an interview. But stay
away from changing tones within a piece. One minute you’re riffing
comically on Uncle Frank’s parade of girlfriends, and the next, the reader
is caught chortling when you shift to Uncle Frank’s abuse of his daughter.
Or the thriller shifts from a slumped body in an alley to the detective’s
girlfriend shopping for bridal gowns, and suddenly we’re in a romance.
(Notice, by the way, how many genres actually have tone in their names:
thriller, romance, mystery, horror. …)
Read your work looking for places where the tone fades or shifts. Focus
your revision there.
3. CUT RUTHLESSLY.
If you reread a piece and decide that nothing works until the second page,
why not simply start it there?
The delete key is your friend. The novelist Carolyn Chute told Writers
Ask: “I write a lot of junk. On and on and on, all this junk. But every now
and then this dramatic moment happens, so I lift that out and put that
aside. And then I write all this junk: They’re brushing their teeth, they’re
sitting there, they’re looking around—you know. Then something will
happen and I’ll pull that out. Because those are the only strong things.”
Read your work looking for places where your engagement wanes.
Boring is bad. Careful is right next to it. When it comes to tone, don’t try
to fix the boring parts—toss them. You can’t fix boring.
Other places where the delete key comes in handy:
Off-topic tangents. You know how it goes: You start out writing about
the president’s pooch, and by the homestretch you’re discoursing
disdainfully on the state of our economy and what a boob the president is
—as if people are lining up to hear your thoughts on that. Stick to the
subject at hand.
Overemphasis on themes. Writing fiction? Don’t hit readers over the
head with your own interpretation of the meaning of it all. You provide
the right detail—say, the wooden coffin—and they’ll supply the mortality
of man. Resist the urge to overtly explain—it can come off as
condescending or redundant.
4. LET TENSION SUSTAIN TONE.
Your piece, whatever it is, should be rife with conflict. It’s not enough to
write an essay about how much you like to spend the day in bed. If
nothing is stopping you from lazing around under the sheets, then you
have no problem, and thus the piece has no tension—an essential element
in sustaining any tone for the long haul. If you find you’ve committed this
mistake, whether in a fictional story or a true one, bring in someone with
the opposite point of view (mothers are always good for this!). That’s
why columnists so often reference their mates—to be the foil, the
reasonable one, so the author isn’t ranting in a vacuum.
5. USE YOUR VOICE.
Are you one of the many writers who blog? Unless you know tomorrow’s
stock prices or are telling readers how to relight a furnace on a freezing
day, it will be your voice, not the content, that draws them in. So you
must sound like somebody. This is true with other forms of personal
writing, as well. Resist the urge to come off as uncomplicated, reasonable
or polite. If you’re expressing opinions, express them! (Note that this is a
format where opinion is the point, not a tiresome add-on.) Don’t say that
whether or not someone likes a particular film “seems to me a matter of
sensibility and perspective.” We know that! Be in a mood. Take a
position. “Anyone who doesn’t like The Ruling Class should be cast into
hell for all eternity.” Look for opportunities to bring a human voice into
your work. There’s more sense of someone behind the words “I had a
breast cut off” (Molly Ivins) than “I had a mastectomy.”
6. CONVEY TONE THROUGH DETAILS AND DESCRIPTIONS.
Consider the difference between “in October” and “under an October
sky.” A description of scenery, however luscious, can tire the reader if
that’s all it is. Use the imagery to show us your character’s mood: A sad
character will notice rotting houses and untended yards; a contented one
will see picturesque shacks and gardens in a profuse state of nature.
When adding details to enrich your writing, tone comes from being as
specific as possible. Change “My husband committed suicide” to “My
husband gassed himself in our Passat in the Austrian Alps.”
I once taught a travel-writing class aboard a cruise up the Amazon, and
sent passengers ashore to a remote village with notebooks. One student,
surprised and amused by the satellite dishes towering over the small huts,
dubbed them “the flowers of the Amazon” in her resulting piece.
Another, having overheard the song “The Air That I Breathe” on an
antiquated village speaker, wrote, “The fact is you can hear the whole
planet breathing while you’re here. As one Brazilian told me, it’s the lung
of the world.” Tone in travel writing comes from such acute observations.
In memoir or fiction, it comes also from offbeat character details, like this
one from the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls:
Dad was so sure a posse of federal investigators was on our trail that he
smoked his unfiltered cigarettes from the wrong end. That way, he
explained, he burned up the brand name, and if the people who were
tracking us looked in his ashtray, they’d find unidentifiable butts instead
of Pall Malls that could be traced to him.
The narrator here, it is safe to say, is not admiring the cunning of her
father; the tone suggests she is old enough to worry about the folly of her
parents.
7. LEARN TO RECOGNIZE BUILT-IN PROBLEMS WITH TONE.
Everybody who’s ever been fired has sat down to write a book about it.
But harping on the wrong that’s been done to you can make your readers
uneasy. If they were seated next to you on a plane, they’d be desperately
longing to change seats. Lawsuits, controversial issues, other people’s
behavior, how overwhelmed you were by the flood of wedding gifts, and
what a chore it was to write all those thank-you notes: all such topics
force you to work hard to overcome the reader’s unease at smelling an
agenda, or anger, or bragging.
In these instances, to fix the tone, you have to fix the way you think about
a given subject. You have to back off, calm down, see other points of
view, maybe even take some responsibility for whatever happened. When
writing about such delicate subjects, you must not let a negative tone take
over by ascribing motives to people: You just tell what they did, and let
the reader read motive into it. You must write with forgiveness,
understanding and humor. In some ways, this can be a payoff to
examining your tone as you write: You change the writing, and the
writing changes you. But if you find this is not possible with your subject,
don’t be afraid to scrap a project that you discover has inherent problems
with tone. You’ll be a better writer for it.