What is formality?
Formality is where your writing sits on the casual-to-formal spectrum, separate from whether the content itself is serious or light. High-formality writing uses longer words, avoids contractions and keeps sentence structure deliberate. Low-formality writing uses everyday words, leans on contractions and reads closer to how people speak. Every piece of content lives somewhere on this dial, and the right position depends on the audience, the channel and the stakes of the message.
Low: Hey, thanks for signing up. We'll be in touch soon.
Medium: Thanks for signing up. We will follow up within one business day.
High: Thank you for your registration. A representative will contact you within one business day.
Why does formality matter?
Readers read register before they read content. A casual tone in a legal document feels sloppy, and a formal tone in an onboarding email feels cold, even when the underlying information is identical. Consistent formality across a brand signals that one team is behind the content, while drift between casual headlines and formal body copy makes a brand feel disorganized. Your formality setting is one of the first things a reader clocks, even if they never name it.
How do you use formality?
Set a default formality level for your brand and document what it looks like in practice, using specific signals such as contraction rules and sentence length.
Allow the level to shift for specific contexts, such as formal legal writing and casual support replies, while keeping a narrow range so the brand still feels coherent.
Pair your formality rule with tone-of-voice settings inside Brivvy so every AI tool in your workflow produces content at the right level automatically.
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