In this lecture we're going talk a little bit about register, or the difference
between informal and formal writing. So, what is register? Register is the
level of formality in spoken and written language. Every language has this idea of
register. In spoken language in English, for example, you have a conversation with
friends, you use very informal vocabulary you may use slang, you may use idioms,
but then if you have a conversation with your teachers, you probably don't speak
the same way to your teacher that you would with a friend. And in an academic
presentation, it's probably going to be the most formal type of spoken language. You
probably don't use any slang, no idioms, and you use tons of academic vocabulary. The
same goes for written language, and the written language is probably more
important right now for you in this class, so we'll focus on this. So, as an
example, if you write a text message to a friend, you will use very informal
language. You use abbreviations like 'BRB'
'lol'. You might even use symbols instead of actually writing out words, and you'll
probably use slang and idioms. But if you read an email to a parent, your language
probably becomes a little bit more cleaned up. You won't use slang and
idioms. You won't write the same things that you would write your friends
to your parents. In an e-mail to a boss or teacher, I hope you don't
write the same way that you write a text message to your boss teacher could get
you into big trouble someday. The last most formal type of riding his academic
essay writing which is the most formal and the most important for you in
college.
So, I want to talk about a few of the basics of academic language. The first thing
is you want to use academic vocabulary. A lot of the words that you use in
everyday conversation are not appropriate for academic writing, so you
want to focus on academic vocabulary. Another thing is you want to use active voice
rather than passive voice. Also you want to try to avoid using contractions, so for
example, if you have to work 'can't', you should use the uncontracted form and just write
it out as 'can not'. You also don't want to use first and second person pronouns, 'I' and 'you'.
Don't use those words in your academic writing. You also want to avoid using
slang or idioms, and you don't want to use phrases that are overused such as 'as we
all know', 'in the world', and nowadays. There are many many other features of academic
language that you should know, and you can actually read about those in the
handout 'Basic Writing Rules'. So, this is an example of a very informal sentence
'Usually you won't get hurt, if you don't fool around." You can see that the world 'you'
is used.
'won't' is contracted. It's a contraction.
'get hurt' is pretty informal conversational language, and 'fool around'
is a kind of idiomatic phrase, so if we apply some of the rules formal
academic writing to this sentence,
we might come up with this sentence. 'In most cases an individual will not be
injured if he or she is careful.' So, the meaning is pretty similar to the
original, but the language is more formal.
'You' has been replaced with 'individual' since we're talking about everybody
people in general.
Instead of saying 'won't' we use the uncontracted form 'will not'. Instead of
saying 'get hurt'
we say 'be injured' and instead of saying 'you don't fool around' which is
very informal as we said, we say 'if he or she is careful' which is a lot more
formal. So, this is a very basic introduction to the idea of register, so
you should now take a look at the 'Basic Writing Rules' handouts and get a more
detailed info explanation of this.