What Is Objective Tone?

By Staff Writer | Last Updated August 4, 2015

Objective tone is used when a writer wants to deliver information in a neutral, factual and unbiased way. Objective tones can be achieved by avoiding personal pronouns, judgemental words that may indicate personal feeling and emotive words that indicate an opinion on the part of the writer.

Objective tone, also known as formal tone, is used mostly in academic and journalistic writing. Though more personal and informal tones can be used in editorials and blogs, objective tones are often seen as professional and factual to readers. Objective tones don’t allow for the writer to inject his own thoughts or feelings on the subject matter and instead allow readers to develop opinions based on factual, unbiased information. Objective tone does not provide any information about the writer in the subject matter.

Words to avoid when attempting to achieve an objective tone include personal pronouns like “I,” “we,” “you” and “our.” Likewise, judgemental and emotive words such as “dislike,” “appalling,” “terrible” and “ugly” are words that inject an opinion into the information. An objective tone must remain impartial and impersonal. On the other hand, a subjective tone provides information about the writer to the reader through his opinion, thoughts and feelings on the subject matter.