Tone management pattern (writing tone) and its relationship with financial reporting readability (content analysis and SEM)

The linguistic features of the information provided and the type of writing of the financial statements (tone) can facilitate the achievement of the goals of conveying financial and economic facts and validating them financially. The eloquence and rhetoric used in the reports is important for understanding quantitative information. In this regard, the present study was conducted with the aim of presenting a tone management model (reporting tone) and examining its relationship with the readability of financial reporting. This study is an exploratory mixed research, in the qualitative part, using thematic analysis technique and based on semi-structured interviews with 20 members of the chartered accountant community in Tehran and Shiraz, to present a qualitative model of tone management (reporting tone).has been discussed, and in the quantitative part, confirmatory factor analysis was used using a 30-question researcher-made questionnaire, in order to check the validity of the proposed qualitative model.In the theme analysis section, 19 basic themes, 3 organizing themes and one overarching theme were identified. Also, the results of the confirmatory factor analysis technique confirmed the fit of the proposed model. In addition, the result of the structural equation modeling technique showed that tone management (reporting tone) has an inverse and significant effect on the readability of financial reporting.Using tone management for informational purposes can help to improve the readability of financial reports and fundamental information of companies since the figures are not able to fully reflect economic realities due to inherent limitations or limitations in accounting standards.