Formal and informal language serve different purposes. The tone, the choice of words and the way the words are put together vary between the two styles. Formal language is less personal than informal language. It is used when writing for professional or academic purposes like university assignments.

Formal English: We use it when writing essays for school, cover letters to apply for jobs, or emails and letters at work.

Informal English: We use it with friends, children, and relatives.

The following list will help you to recognize the informal and formal ways of saying the same thing. The list is divided into sections of: verbs, transitions, emphasis words, abbreviations, and slang.

Verbs – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
say sorry	apologize, apologise
go up	increase
go down	decrease
set up	establish
look at	examine
blow up	explode
find out	discover
bring about	cause
put off	postpone, delay
rack up	accumulate
make up	fabricate
stand for	represent
find out	discover, ascertain
leave out	omit
point out	indicate
go against	oppose
get in touch with	contact
It’s about	It concerns, It’s in regards to
need to	required
think about	consider
get	obtain
put up	tolerate
deal with	handle
seem	appear
show	demonstrate, illustrate, portray
start	commence
keep	retain
free	release
get on someone’s nerves	bother
ring up	call
show up	arrive
let	permit
fill in	substitute, inform
block	undermine
give the go ahead, greenlight	authorize, authorise

Transitions – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
Anyways	Nevertheless
Plus/Also	Moreover/ Furthermore
But	However
So	Therefore/Thus
Also	In addition, Additionally
ASAP	as soon as possible/at your earliest convenience
Okay, OK	acceptable
In the meantime	In the interim
I think	In my opinion,
In the end,	Finally
To sum up	In conclusion,
In a nutshell/Basically	To summarize,
Anyway,	Notwithstanding
All right	Acceptable
Well,
To top it all off,
On top of it all,
	In order to

 

Emphasis Words – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
lots of/ a lot of	much, many
tons of, heaps of	large quantities of, a number of
totally	completely, strongly
really, very	definitely

 

Letter Expressions – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
Hi Robert,	Dear Sir or Madam
Just wanted to let you know…	I am writing to inform you…
Love,	Yours sincerely, Yours faithfully,
Cheers,
Yours Truly, Best regards, kind regards
Hope to hear from you soon	I look forward to hearing from you
You can call me if you need anything	Please do not hesitate to contact me

 

Abbreviations – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
ASAP	as soon as possible
T.V.	television
photo	photograph
cell	cell phone
net	Internet

 

Slang – Informal & Formal

Informal	Formal
kids	children
bad	negative
good	positive
really big	considerable
right	correct
wrong	incorrect
smart	intelligent
cheap	inexpensive
loaded	rich

Formal and informal language serve different purposes. The tone, the choice of words and the way the words are put together vary between the two styles. Formal language is less personal than informal language. It is used when writing for professional or academic purposes like university assignments.

Enjoy!