tonely

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Tone/ly: A Neurodivergent-Friendly Tone Detection Tool for Conversational Text

Tone/ly is a Chrome extension and accessibility tool designed specifically for Twitter. It was created with the neurodivergent community in mind but it may be used by anyone who experiences difficulty in understanding the tone of sentences.

Tone/ly can help explain and recommend possible tones of any tweet written in English whether you are reading or writing them, all while accustoming you to using Tone Indicators.

Table Of Contents

What are Tone Indicators?

Not familiar with Tone Indicators? Don’t worry, the idea is simple.

Tone Indicators are symbols that people use to, by the name itself, indicate the tone of their message and are commonly found at the end of their message. Let’s look at a few examples:

See that at the end? The “/hj” is an example of a Tone Indicator to mean “Half-joking” which shows that this person is only kidding themselves. In general, Tone Indicators are a combination of a slash (“/”) and a few letters that describe the tone. Let’s look at more examples:

At times, people may use more than one at the same. Other people place it all at the end of the message, some place it somewhere else like in the middle. Here, “/lh” means “Light-hearted” while “/gen” means “Genuine.” In some cases, there are multiple variations of the same tone indicator. For example, “/gen” and “/g” both mean “Genuine.

Getting the hang of it? Here’s a few more examples:


(“/j” means “Joking”)


(“/s” means “Sarcastic”)


(“/srs” means “Serious”)

The ones shown here are only examples of the most commonly used and popularly known. There are many more out there but that’s for you to discover! Now that you have a basic understanding of tone indicators, how does Tone/ly work with this? Let’s see!

What can Tone/ly do?

It has THREE main features! Let’s take a look at each one.

Explainer

With so many tone indicators being used in social media sites, then it is no surprise that you are not familiar with all of them. If you saw a tweet with a tone indicator but don’t know the meaning of it, then this feature is for you!

The Tone Indicator Explainer is used for tweets that already have tone indicators, as it will show the meaning of the tone indicator for you. You can use this both in reading tweets and writing tweets.

In the Reader’s POV, you would only need to click on the tweet with a tone indicator, and then click on the Tone/ly logo found on the lower right hand corner of the tweet. This would open a pop-over that shows you the meaning of the tone indicators found on that tweet.


Explainer (Reader POV)

The feature works the same in the Writer’s POV as well. If you have a tone indicator in mind and you want to check if the tone indicator you typed is correct, just type down that tone indicator and then click on the Tone/ly logo—Poof! It shows you the meaning of those tone indicators. You can use this to verify if the spelling and meaning you had in mind is correct.


Explainer (Writer POV)

Tagger

Not everyone uses tone indicators so are more than likely to encounter tweets that don’t have it. If you are unsure of the tweet’s tone, then you can use this feature!

The Tone Indicator Tagger is used for tweets that do not have any tone indicators, as it will interpret its meaning for you. You can access this the same way as the Explainer (i.e., select a tweet, click the Tone/ly logo). Only difference is this feature is for reading tweets only—be it your own past tweets or tweets from another user.


Tagger (Other user’s tweets)

However, take note that Tone/ly is a learning machine. As of now, it was only trained to understand English tweets so be sure to use the features in that language only.

Feedback

Even machines make mistakes, so does our learning machine Tone/ly. So what do you do when you use Tone/ly on your past tweets and you don’t agree with its interpretation? Well, like humans, we teach them! If you want to correct Tone/ly, this feature is your go-to!

The Tone Indicator Feedback is used for your own past tweets that you want to correct Tone/ly’s understanding of. Your feedback will allow Tone/ly to learn and improve in time.

Similar to before, you select your own past tweet that you’re reading and click the Tone/ly logo. Once you do, you will see how Tone/ly currently understands your tweet. You can choose to select any of the Tone/ly’s current interpretations or you select different tone(s) altogether in the Add Tones dropdown menu (or do both!).



Feedback (Own past tweets)

Now the next time your tweet is viewed by yourself or other users, your selected tone(s) is how Tone/ly will tag your tweet!

Recommender

Now, the main (and coolest) feature of Tone/ly is assisting you with writing clearer tweets. Aren’t sure how your tweet sounds? Well, pull out this feature!

The Tone Indicator Recommender is used to show you how your tweet might come off to other people by showing you how it understands the tweet you’re writing.

Likewise, click the Tone/ly logo after writing your tweet to ask it for help. The popover will show you how Tone/ly sees your tweet by giving you its top 3 recommended tone indicators to attach to your tweet. In the same way as Feedback, you may choose any of the 3 or manually select the tone you want to use in the dropdown menu.



Recommender (Writing own tweets)

How can I install Tone/ly?

Installing our beloved Tone/ly is easy. Note that you will be notified by Chrome every time there is an update, and thus, you only need to click on the Update buttton.

Before we install this, you would need to remove any previous installation of Tone/ly from your Google Chrome browser. You only need to click on the Remove button on the Tone/ly extension in the chrome://extensions/ page.

Now, let’s walk through the steps.

Installation through the Chrome Extension Web Store

  1. Go to the Chrome Webstore Link of Tone/ly: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tonely/hkddpeghpgmgmonmmkpjfhnaihagjiki
  2. Click the Add to Chrome button.

  3. In the pop-over, click on the Add extension button.

  4. You now have Tone/ly installed. Try it out!

How can I contact you?

If you notice any strange behavior with Tone/ly such as any bugs, glitches, or unexpected errors, immediately report this issue to us by filling up this bug report form: https://forms.gle/CqoyvPe8mqGc85PK9

What’s new with Tone/ly? (Bugs & Fixes)

v1.2