Tone arguments are not necessarily logical errors

I think people's objections to tone arguments have often been misinterpreted because (ironically) the objections are often explained more emotively and less dispassionately.

As I understand it, the problem with "tone arguments" is NOT that they're inherently fallacious, but rather, than they're USUALLY (although not necessarily) rude and inflammatory.

I think a stereotypical exchange might be:

A says something inadvertently offensive to subgroup Beta B says "How dare you? Blah blah blah" A says "Don't get so emotional! Also, what you said is wrong because p, q and r" C says "Hey, no tone arguments, please"

A is correct that B's point might be more persuasive if it were less emotional and were well-crafted to be persuasive to people regardless whether they're already aware of the issues or not, and often correct about p, q and r (whether they're substansive rebuttals of the main point, or just quibbles) . But if B fails to put B's argument in the strongest possible form , it's A's responsibility to evaluate the stronger form of the argument, not just critique B for not doing so. And C pointed that out, just in a way that might unfortunately be opaque to A.