What term refers to the hints within the text that help identify the author's purpose, such as tone and word choice?

• A. Audience
• B. Textual Clues
• C. To Describe
• D. Genre

Answer: (B)

Identifying textual clues in a passage helps you deduce the author's purpose. The hints inside the text—tone and word choice—signal what the author aims to achieve. Textual clues are the evidence readers use to infer whether the author wants to inform, persuade, entertain, or describe. For example, a neutral, factual tone with precise details usually points to informing or explaining, while a forceful, emotive tone with loaded language suggests an attempt to persuade. Audience refers to who the text is written for, not the signals within the text that reveal purpose. Genre is the category of the work and doesn’t capture the hints that point to why the author wrote it.