How to measure the formality of your writing (and hit the register you are aiming for)

You know formal writing when you read it, but it is genuinely hard to judge in your own draft. You are too close to it. A cover letter that feels professional to you might read as stiff to a hiring manager; a blog post you think is friendly might read as sloppy to a client. The problem is that "tone" feels subjective — but the signals readers actually use to place your writing on the casual-to-formal axis are concrete and countable.

The Text Formality Analyzer counts them and returns a single score from 0 (very casual) to 100 (very formal). This piece breaks down what goes into that number, what the bands mean, and how to move your writing toward the register you are actually aiming for.

The signals that pull the score down

The analyzer starts every text at a neutral 50 and adjusts from there. Three things make writing read as casual, and each subtracts from the score:

• Slang and filler. Words like gonna, wanna, gotta, kinda, yeah, cool, awesome, stuff, things, really, and very mark informal speech. Each one found pulls the score down (up to a capped limit), because nothing signals "casual" faster than conversational vocabulary.
• Contractions. "Don't", "we'll", "it's" — the tool detects the apostrophe-contraction pattern and counts each one as a small nudge toward casual. Contractions are not wrong; they are just informal, which is exactly the point of measuring them.
• First- and second-person pronouns. A high ratio of I, me, my, we, us, you, your signals direct, personal address — warm and casual. The analyzer weights this as a ratio of your total words, so it scales with how conversational the whole piece is, not just how long it is.

The signals that pull it up

Three things push the other way, raising the score toward formal:

• Formal markers. A curated set of register-raising words — furthermore, moreover, consequently, therefore, hence, notwithstanding, aforementioned, utilize, facilitate, demonstrate, constitute, comprise — each adds to the score. These are the connectives and Latinate verbs that academic and legal prose lean on.
• Average word length. Longer words, on average, read as more formal — "use" versus "utilize", "help" versus "facilitate". The tool rewards average word length above roughly four characters, which is the everyday baseline.
• Passive voice. "The data were analyzed" reads as more formal and impersonal than "we analyzed the data". Because passives suppress the human actor, a higher passive count nudges the score upward.

Notice the symmetry: contractions and pronouns make writing personal and casual; passives and Latin-root vocabulary make it impersonal and formal. The score is essentially a tug-of-war between those two forces, capped at each end so no single signal can dominate.

What the bands mean

The 0–100 score maps onto five bands: very casual (under 20), casual (20–39), neutral (40–59), formal (60–79), and very formal (80+). Most good general writing — a clear business email, a well-edited article — lands in the neutral-to-formal range, somewhere around 50 to 70. Slide much below 20 and the writing reads as text-message casual; climb above 80 and it starts to read as bureaucratic.

One thing worth keeping in mind: the bands are not a quality ladder. A 75 is not "better" than a 45 — it is just more formal. A product launch tweet that scores 75 has a problem, and a Supreme Court brief that scores 45 has a bigger one. The right band is the one that matches your reader and your medium, which is why the target presets below matter more than the raw number on its own.

Aim for a target, not just a number

A raw formality score is more useful when you compare it to where you want to be, so the analyzer includes three target presets, each with its own acceptable range:

• Academic — a target range of roughly 70–100. Expects formal markers, few contractions, and minimal first/second person.
• Business — roughly 50–80. Professional but not stiff; some direct address is fine.
• Casual — roughly 0–45. Conversational, contractions welcome, pronouns encouraged.

Pick the target that matches your context and the tool tells you whether you fit — and, crucially, which way to move if you don't. Too casual for an academic target? It will point at your contractions and personal pronouns. Too formal for a casual target? It will suggest loosening up with direct address. That is far more actionable than a bare number, because it converts "this feels off" into a specific edit.

A note on what it cannot see

Formality is not the same as quality or appropriateness. The most formal possible text is not the best text — over-formal writing is a real failure mode, full of "utilize" and "in order to facilitate" where "use" and "to help" would land harder. The analyzer measures register, not whether that register serves your reader. Use it to confirm you are in the right neighbourhood, then trust your judgment on the words themselves.

To check where your draft sits, paste it into the Text Formality Analyzer, choose your target, and read the breakdown. Pair it with the Vocabulary Sophistication Analyzer if you want to see how much of your formality comes from word choice specifically — together they give you a clear, fixable picture of how your writing actually sounds.