Tone Practice

Read the following passage from Snow Falling on Cedars and choose a tone, based on punctuation, sentence fluency, and word choice. When you post your comment, list the tone and at least one reason to support your choice.

San Piedro was an island of five thousand damp souls, named by lost Spaniards who moored offshore in the year 1603. They'd sailed in search of the Northwest Passage, as many Spaniards did in those days, and their pilot and captain, Martin de Aquilar of the Vizcaino expedition, sent a work detail ashore to cull a fresh spar pole from among the hemlocks at water's edge. Its members were murdered almost immediately upon setting foot on the beach by a party of Nootka slave raiders. Settlers arrived- mostly wayward souls and eccentrics who had meandered off the Oregon Trail. A few rooting pigs were slaughtered in 1845- by Canadian Englishmen up in arms about the border- but San Piedro Island generally lay clear of violence after that. The most distressing news story of the preceding ten years had been the wounding of an island resident by a drunken Seattle yachtsman with a shotgun on the Fourth of July, 1951.

Welcome to Advanced English 3 at BHS

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