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Common Core ELA7th GradeReading: Informational

RI.7.4: Word Meanings, Word Choice and Tone

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.4 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

Get the Word MapAll 41 7th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 7, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.7.4 Means in Plain English

Seventh graders work out what words mean in a nonfiction text, figurative, emotional and technical, and then ask why the writer picked them. The night of March 5, 1770, reads one way as “the Boston Massacre” and another as “the Incident on King Street.”

Sixth graders (RI.6.4) worked out figurative, connotative and technical meanings. Seventh grade adds the next question: what does this one word do to the meaning and the tone? Eighth grade (RI.8.4) adds analogies and allusions to other texts to the word choices students weigh.

RI.7.4 I Can Statements

  • I can explain what a word suggests beyond its dictionary meaning.
  • I can work out technical terms from how the text uses them.
  • I can explain how one word choice changes a passage’s tone.

RI.7.4 Worked Example

The passage is itself about word choice, and the weak answer defines the key word without saying what it does to the reader.

Read the Story
On the night of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered around a British soldier standing guard on King Street in Boston. People shouted insults and threw snowballs and chunks of ice. More soldiers arrived, and in the confusion they fired into the crowd. Five colonists died.Within weeks, Paul Revere was selling an engraving titled “The Bloody Massacre.” It showed soldiers in a neat line firing on calm, unarmed townspeople.At the trial, the soldiers’ lawyer, John Adams, called the crowd “a motley rabble.” The jury acquitted most of the soldiers. Two were convicted of manslaughter, a legal term for an unlawful killing that was not planned.In Britain, the night became known as the Incident on King Street. In Boston it stayed a massacre, and that name, with all the anger packed into it, is the one most textbooks use today.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Why did Bostonians call the night a “massacre,” and how does that word change the tone compared with “incident” or Adams’s “rabble”?
Not Yet“A massacre means when a lot of people are killed. Bostonians used it because people died.”A dictionary definition and nothing more. Five people killed is not what most readers picture as a massacre, and the answer never asks why that gap matters or what the word makes a reader feel.
Meets the Standard“A massacre suggests helpless victims killed on purpose, so the word makes the soldiers sound cruel and the crowd innocent, the same story Revere’s engraving tells with its ‘calm, unarmed townspeople.’ ‘Incident’ is flat and makes the night sound like an accident, and Adams’s ‘rabble’ turns the victims into a dangerous mob. Each name takes a side, and ‘massacre’ gives the story an angry tone the other names avoid.”The answer moves past the definition to what each word suggests, ties the word to its tone, and compares the three choices the author sets side by side.
Question Stems to Use
What does this word suggest that a plainer word would not?Who uses this word, and what side does it put them on?How would the sentence feel with a different word in its place?Which words here are technical terms? How does the text define them?Is this phrase meant literally or figuratively?What tone do these word choices create together?

Common Mistakes with RI.7.4

Stopping at the dictionary

“Massacre means killing a lot of people.”

Try this: Follow every definition with “So what does the word make the reader feel or believe?” and treat the second answer as the real one.

Naming the tone without the word

“The tone is angry.” with no word from the text

Try this: Require students to quote the exact word that creates the tone and swap in a neutral word to show the difference.

Skipping the technical term

Reading “manslaughter” as a fancy word for murder

Try this: Point students to the definition the text supplies, then ask why the difference between manslaughter and murder mattered to the soldiers.

Where RI.7.4 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.6.4Work out figurative, connotative and technical meanings of words in a nonfiction text.
AlongsideL.7.5Understand figurative language and the shades of meaning between related words.RH.6-8.6Spot loaded language and other clues to an author’s point of view in a history text.
Comes NextRI.8.4Weigh how word choices, including analogies and allusions, shape meaning and tone.

Practice RI.7.4

Vocabulary Worksheet GeneratorFree ToolEnter the technical and loaded words from the article you are teaching and get a worksheet that checks meaning in context before the tone discussion.Grade 7Words in contextTechnical terms
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Quick Check

  1. What does the word “massacre” suggest about the soldiers and the crowd?
  2. How does John Adams’s phrase “a motley rabble” change how the crowd seems?
  3. What does the legal term “manslaughter” mean, according to the passage?

RI.7.4: Other Names

RI.7.4CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.4

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.