Guide to Formal Vocabulary in English Writing and Speaking

Let's look at some examples. Which word seems more formal? Regarding is more formal. About is a very common word in English. Regarding is less common, but it can mean about. English has a large vocabulary, and we often have more than one word with a similar meaning. Sometimes one of the words is more formal. If you're interested in why one word is more formal than another, it's basically because English is made up of vocabulary from German and French Latin. The words of French Latin origin are more formal than those of German origin. Regarding is of French origin, and about is of German origin.

So how about this example? Which one is more formal? Provide sounds more formal than give. Now let's look at these three words. Which one sounds the most informal? Right. The word stuff is very informal. To sound more formal, use another verb instead of a phrasal verb. In this example, you can see that we have a phrasal verb talk about and the verb discuss. So which do you think is more formal? If you said discuss is more formal, you're right. Try to avoid using the verb get too much. If you don't want to sound too informal, use alternatives like receive or understand if possible.

Now look at this. Why is the first example more formal? By not using contractions like I'm, doesn't, and I've, we make the writing more formal. Also, did you notice how in the very informal email, ASAP was used instead of as soon as possible? Using abbreviations like this or info instead of information is very informal. The last thing that you might have noticed is that in the informal email, some words were left out. Instead of saying it'd be great, we can write great. Instead of I'm writing about the meeting, we could just write about the meeting.

So let's review what we've learned. We decide how formal to be based on who we are writing to. And we can make the language more formal by changing the vocabulary. Look at this table. This summarizes the ways we can change formality.