Formal Versus Informal: Getting Register Right
The scenario decides your register before you write a word. Getting it wrong is a task error, and mixing the two is worse than choosing either one.
Register is scored, not styled
Task 1 gives you a reader, and that reader fixes whether the email is formal or informal. This is not a matter of taste. Appropriate tone is named inside Task Fulfilment, which is 25 per cent of the score, and writing a formal email where an informal one was required carries a clear penalty even when the grammar and vocabulary are strong.
The reason it is scored so directly is that register is evidence of reading. Someone who writes Dear Sir or Madam to a cousin has not absorbed who the email is for, and that is the same failure as missing a bullet, expressed differently.
The useful consequence is that register costs you nothing to get right. It takes ten seconds of reading and one decision. No other quarter-criterion on this test is that cheap.
Reading the scenario for the reader
Ask one question: what is my relationship to this person. Everything follows from the answer.
Formal covers anyone whose role, not friendship, puts you in contact. A landlord, a building manager, a customer service department, a company you paid, a school principal, a city official, a supervisor, an editor, a neighbour you have never spoken to. The test for formal is that you would use a title and a surname in real life.
Informal covers people you know personally. A friend, a sibling, a cousin, a former classmate, a colleague the prompt describes as a friend. The clearest signal is that the prompt gives you a first name and no surname, or calls the person your friend outright.
Two cases cause hesitation. A colleague you work with daily but who is not described as a friend sits in the middle; write a light formal email, with full sentences and a courteous close but without Dear Sir or Madam stiffness. A neighbour depends entirely on how the prompt describes them: your neighbour Tom, who you often chat with is informal, while the neighbour in the unit above is formal.
The signals that build a formal email
Formal register is made of five things, and they have to agree with each other.
Greeting. Dear Mr Alvarez or Dear Ms Okafor when the prompt gives a name. Dear Customer Service Manager when it gives only a role. Use Dear Sir or Madam only when there is genuinely no name and no role.
No contractions. I am writing, not I'm writing. It has not been repaired, not it hasn't been repaired. This is the fastest single change that makes a draft read formally.
Full, complete sentences. Formal English tolerates longer sentences with subordinate clauses, but only if you control them. Where you are unsure, shorter and correct beats longer and broken.
Requests framed as requests. Could you please arrange, I would appreciate it if you could, I would be grateful if. Not I want you to and not Please do this immediately. A formal complaint stays courteous precisely because it is a complaint.
Close and name. Sincerely, Yours sincerely or Kind regards, then your full name. A formal email signed with a first name only reads as unfinished.
The signals that build an informal email
Informal is not formal-with-mistakes. It has its own grammar and its own courtesy, and writing it well is harder than most candidates expect.
Greeting. Hi Sam or Hey Priya. Dear Sam is acceptable but slightly stiff; Dear Mr Sam is wrong twice over.
Contractions throughout. I'm, you'll, can't, it's. Their absence is what makes an informal email sound like a legal notice.
Shorter sentences and a warmer opening move. Informal emails usually begin with a line of contact before the business: Hope you're doing well, It's been ages since we spoke, Sorry for the slow reply. One line, then straight to the point.
Direct requests and offers. Could you bring your camera? rather than I would be grateful if you could bring your camera. Let me know rather than I look forward to your response at your earliest convenience.
Close. Talk soon, See you, Cheers, Love where the relationship supports it, then a first name. What informal does not license is slang so heavy it becomes unclear, or missing punctuation. The register is casual; the control is not.
Run a contraction sweep before you submit. If a formal email contains one "I'm" or an informal one reads without a single contraction, you have found the mixed-register problem in under fifteen seconds.
The mixed-register failure, and how to see it
The worst outcome is not the wrong register. It is both registers in one email, because that reads as no decision at all. It looks like this:
Hi Ms Okafor, Hope you're well. I am writing to formally express my profound dissatisfaction regarding the aforementioned incident. My stuff got pretty wrecked to be honest. I would be most grateful if you could sort it out. Talk soon, Daniel
Every sentence is comprehensible and the email would be understood. It still scores poorly, because the tone changes four times in five lines, and Task Fulfilment asks for appropriate tone, singular.
The repair is mechanical. Read your draft looking only at contractions: if some sentences have them and some do not, you have mixed. Then read only the greeting and the close together: Hi Ms Okafor against Talk soon is an obvious mismatch that takes three seconds to catch.
A cleaner formal version of that same email reads: Dear Ms Okafor, I am writing about damage to my belongings during my move on 14 March. Several items arrived broken, including a glass cabinet. I would appreciate it if you could arrange an inspection this week. Sincerely, Daniel Reyes. The content is unchanged; only the register has been made consistent.
What register does not change
Register changes how you say things. It does not change what you have to say, and candidates sometimes let an informal prompt talk them out of structure.
An informal email still needs a clear purpose in the first two sentences, still needs all three bullets answered with specifics, still needs paragraphs, and still needs 150 to 200 words. A chatty three-hundred-word ramble to a friend fails on the same criteria as a formal one would.
Register also does not license errors. Informal English is not less accurate English. Me and my friend was going is not casual, it is wrong, and Readability treats it the same way in both registers.
Finally, register is not politeness. A formal complaint can be firm, and an informal note can be serious. What formality controls is distance from the reader, not warmth.
Read your greeting and your sign-off next to each other as a pair. "Hi Sam ... Sincerely, Daniel Reyes" and "Dear Ms Okafor ... Cheers" are both instant tone failures and both are invisible until you read the two lines together.
Practise it
Five judgements on register, most of them a choice between two versions of the same sentence.