Chapter 10: Tone and Purpose
Lab Activity 50: Tone and Purpose tbskils_small.gif
 

tbskils.gifObjective
To identify the author's purpose and tone in a textbook passage.


arrow.gifStep 2: Refer the selection from a college history textbook in the Lab Manual to answer the following questions.

8     After a machine recount, Bush's margin in Florida was reduced to several hundred votes, with Democrats complaining that a punch-card ballot used in some communities was confusing, depriving Gore of thousands of votes; worse, the machines routinely failed to count incompletely punched ballots, Gore's lawyers demanded that the ballots in several predominantly Democratic counties be counted by hand. In some counties hand recounts were initiated, with examiners holding ballots up to the light to determine whether the chad—the "hole in the punch card"—had been sufficiently imprinted to constitute a vote. Republicans countered that Democrats had no right to change voting procedures after the election. They demanded that the hand recounts cease.

9     Yet when overseas absentee ballots began pouring in, many of them from military personnel, Republicans demanded that technical rules, such as those requiring that ballots be postmarked on or before the election, be waived. Gore objected. The entire election ended up in the courts. On December 12, more than a month after the election, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that the selective hand recounts violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. Bush's margin would stand.


      1. The topic of this selection is the  

 
 
 
 
      2. What is the central idea of this selection? 

 
 
 
 
      3. The purpose of this selection is  

 
 
 
 
      4.      "The main issue was what to do with the federal surpluses, which by some projections would reach over $1 trillion within five years. Bush called for a substantial tax cut; Gore wanted to increase spending on education and shore up the social security system. But neither issue generated rancor, and the election turned on the character of the candidates."

This paragraph is an example of  

 
 
      5. "Gore, though knowledgeable, seemed stiff, and he occasionally indulged in self-serving bombast, as when he claimed to have ‘invented’ the Internet."

Bombast means  

 
 
 
 
      6. "Gore, though knowledgeable, seemed stiff, and he occasionally indulged in self-serving bombast, as when he claimed to have ‘invented’ the Internet."

The tone of this sentence is  

 
 
 
 
      7. "Bush's principal offense was against the English language. "Rarely is the question asked," he once declaimed, ‘Is our children learning?’ His poetic flights of fancy did not stay long aloft, as when he evoked American aspirations for ‘wings to take dream’ and endorsed economic growth to ‘make the pie higher.’

The purpose of this passage is  

 
 
 
 
      8. "However exaggerated or garbled their message, the candidates spent a record one billion dollars in getting it to the voters."

The tone of this sentence is  

 
 
 
 
      9.      "Yet when overseas absentee ballots began pouring in, many of them from military personnel, Republicans demanded that technical rules, such as those requiring that ballots be postmarked on or before the election, be waived. Gore objected. The entire election ended up in the courts. On December 12, more than a month after the election, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that the selective hand recounts violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. Bush's margin would stand."

The tone of this paragraph is  

 
 
 
 
      10. The outcome of the 2000 presidential election is an example of 

 
 





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