Roger,
I don't know if you're going to find it in a dictionary. The term I was using
is, "emotional tone". You tend to be very literal. I did explain it in another
way. The problem isn't that you're not exact enough or precise enough. The
problem is that you are not gentle and polite. The problem is that sometimes,
if someone writes something with which you disagree, it may not be necessary to
always write an opposing view, even if you disagree. On a list like this, it's
OK to let people write what they think or feel sometimes without arguing. If I
wrote diatribes every time I disagreed with an article that someone else or
even I posted, I'd be consuming a great deal of my time.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 12:31 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Tones
Miriam is always accusing me of inserting tones into what I have to say and
Carl has in the past too. That has never made sense to me because I have always
understood the word tone to be a quality of a musical note or some other kind
of sound akin to pitch. I was not real clear what the difference is between a
tone and a pitch, but neither word seemed to have any application at all to
something I write. So I just now decided to look it up in a dictionary. I used
the Wiktionary application that is built into my JAWS screen reader. The first
thing that is discussed is exactly what I understood the word to mean. It said
that a tone was a specific pitch. In that case it is pretty much the same thing
as a pitch as I have always understood it to mean. In that case I often hear
different tones in what someone has to say when they are speaking. It is what I
call a tone of voice, but it still seems that that does not apply to writing.
As I looked further down the page there was some discussion of things like
muscle tone and tones of colors. I skimmed past that stuff because I didn't see
how that could relate to this context either.
But I did find something about applying the word tone to writing and I suppose
that is the context that I was looking for. It was brief. It simply said that
it referred to a way of writing. Well, everyone has a way of writing, so I
suppose everyone has a tone to their writing. But if that is tone then I am
only conscious of only one tone to my writing.
It is simply to say what I have to say as clearly as I can. I do not succeed in
being as clear as I want to all the time and when I am asked for clarification
I try to explain myself again as best as I can. When someone does not specify
what they are having trouble with in what I have to say I often do not know
what to say and I think I often say the same thing over again with the words
rearranged a bit. It would really work a lot better if someone who did not
understand what I was trying to say would do some explaining to me, some
explaining about what and how he or she did not understand about what I said.
However, whether I succeed or not I still try to be as clear as I can. But what
I am being accused of is inserting some kind of nefarious tones into what I
write.
That makes no sense at all. I simply say what I have to say and do not even
think of being somehow underhanded or whatever. Again, the only tone I strive
for is clarity. So it still makes no sense to me that I would be accused of
using tones of any other kind. All I can say is to repeat this again. I say
what I mean and mean what I say. And I do not insert hidden meanings into what
I say. I wouldn't know how to go about that even if I wanted to.
--
___
Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely
to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of
wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in
which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases
and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a
refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has
good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of
science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is
just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected
by-what, religion? No, by good science.”
― Sam Harris
