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Choosing a writing voice and tone often depends on how formal or informal the writing is.

Key learning points

• What formal and informal writing means.
• When each form is appropriate.
• The impacts of formal and informal writing on readers and listeners.
• The conventions of standard English.

Formal writing can be identified by its serious, unemotional and impersonal tone.

The language is complex, using sophisticated vocabulary that has fewer contractions, for example, always using ‘will not’ rather than ‘won’t’.

Formal writing, often, uses more jargon, including technical or specialist words.

Formal writing often avoids using ‘I or ‘you’. For example, ‘The answers are believed to be correct’ is more formal than writing ‘I believe the answers are correct’. It creates more distance between the reader and writer which makes it seem more factual.

The spelling, punctuation and grammar follows standard rules or conventions.

Often, formal writing is used to give information but it can also be chosen to impress, persuade or show respect, for example, when writing to an important person.

Examples of formal writing include:

• Essays
• Textbooks
• Official letters
• Contracts
• Newspapers
• Instruction manuals

Informal writing is different to formal writing as it is more reflective of a person’s speaking voice and personality.

Informal language is more casual and spontaneous than formal writing. It can also show the relationship between the writer and reader. For example, a writer is likely to write informally to close friends and family or when their audience is their own peer group.

Informal writing can use sentences, paragraphs, vocabulary, and punctuation much more freely for dramatic effect or simply to sound relaxed, chatty and friendly.

There is no expectation to be balanced or objective.

Contractions (can’t, isn’t), abbreviations (FYI, LOL), slang (kids, cuppa) as well as incomplete sentences (Hey! Alright?) are commonly used.

Examples of informal writing include:

• Comic books
• Social media posts
• Personal blogs
• Postcards
• Text messages
• Anecdotal articles

The decision whether to use formal or informal writing often depends on the context or situation that you are in.

There are levels of formality and informality:

• You would need to be extremely formal with the King, addressing him as ‘Your Majesty’ if you met him, whereas, if you were writing a letter to apply for a job you would still be formal but not to the same level.
• You might write informally to your Gran but much more informally to your best mate.

If it was a serious or sad situation you may also choose to be more formal. For example, you might write to express your condolences rather than send a hug by text to the family of someone who has passed away.

A formal letter or email would have a standard greeting ‘Dear Ms. White’ and sign-off ‘Yours sincerely, Nathan Reilly’ whereas an informal letter or email might use a first name ‘Dear Gemma’ and end ‘Love Nate’.

It's helpful to know when and how to switch between the different levels of formality in writing. Some of it is about knowing rules and conventions so that you don’t offend your reader or make it easy for them to ignore or underestimate you. However, you are likely to always be more informal with people you know well, like friends and family, or those you are in a similar age group with.

Formal and informal language serve different purposes. It’s important to know when formal or informal writing is expected as it helps a writer to connect with the reader or listener.

• Your best friend would be surprised to receive a text saying: ‘Good morning, Madam’. Equally, the head teacher would probably not appreciate being greeted with ‘Yo, Big G!’

It can be helpful to think about your intended audience. The topic could be exactly the same but the way you communicate might be different.

Some questions to consider:

• Are you writing to someone you know well or someone you have never met? If you know them well, you can probably be more relaxed and less formal.
• Is the person you are writing to older or younger than you? If they are much younger than you, using complicated, formal language is not going to help them to understand you.
• Are you writing to someone important who needs to take you seriously? If you want to be taken seriously, emojis, jokes, slang and lots of exclamation marks will not reassure the reader that you are mature, intelligent and someone to be listened to. They might even think you are being rude.

Standard English follows all the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling that formal writing uses.

It is used every day to be polite when dealing with people we do not have a personal relationship with such as the public, teachers, nurses, doctors, police officers, shop workers and everyone that is not a friend or family member.

Standard English has been standardised so that the widest group of people can understand it. Both standard English and formal writing do not use dialects (regional spellings and words) and slang terms.

Find out more about slang here.

Unlike formal writing, Standard English can use contractions, abbreviations, simple language and short sentences – it just has to be grammatically correct.