Two major elements of Chinese characters are grapheme and pronunciation. In some cases, pronunciation becomes the only measure to indicate the meaning of a character. Besides this, there are a number of Chinese characters with the same pronunciation and these characters have different graphemes and meanings though they are pronounced the same. It is through these characters with similar pronunciation that partial tones of Chinese characters convey profound meanings.

In the old days, ordinary people dared not express their agony and resistance against oppression and tyranny in a straightforward way, so they produced many ballads related to politics making use of partial tones in Chinese characters, that is, they used characters that meant differently but were pronounced the same to form ballads and express their inner feelings in an indirect way.

After repeated use of partial tones, a rhetoric method of the Chinese language was formed -- Xieyin Ti (partial tone style). In this style of writing, characters at the end of certain lines should have partial tones.

Partial tones not only appear in folk songs but also are widely used in people's daily life. For instance, the character  (Fu) means good fortune. Characters  (inverse) and  (arrive) have the same pronunciation of Dao. Making use of these partial tones, Chinese households usually post the character (Fu) inversely on their doors during the Spring Festival to mean that Good fortune has arrived at their houses.