What is Formal mode?
Formal mode raises the register of a paragraph for business writing: client emails, cover letters, LinkedIn posts, internal memos, anything that needs to read professional without reading stiff. It trims contractions ("don't" becomes "do not"), reaches for precise verbs over conversational ones ("look at" becomes "review", "get" becomes "receive" or "obtain" depending on context), and tightens hedge phrases that read fine in a Slack message but loose in a paragraph going to a client.
What it doesn't do is strip your personality out of the writing. That's a common failure mode of formality tools — they flatten everything into the same beige corporate voice. Formal mode keeps the bones of how you write and only adjusts the register on top. If you ran the same paragraph through Formal and through someone else's, you'd still know which one was yours.
When to use Formal mode
Pick Formal when the audience expects professional register and your draft is sitting one notch below it. The classic case: you wrote a paragraph for a client email the way you'd write it for a coworker. The information is right but the register is wrong. Run it through Formal at Medium strength and you'll get three versions that sound like they belong in the email you're about to send.
Other good fits: cover letters where you've explained something clearly but casually, LinkedIn posts where the first draft reads like a tweet, executive summaries that need to land at the level your reader expects, proposal sections where the surrounding paragraphs are formal and one of yours dropped in register. Also useful for non-native English speakers who can write the content correctly but aren't sure which phrasing reads professional.
For longer-form business writing, the essay rewriter walks through the paragraph-by-paragraph workflow that works for documents like statements of purpose and application essays.
How Formal mode compares to other modes
Formal and Academic are often confused. Both raise the register; they raise it in different directions. Academic adds hedged claims, citation-friendly phrasing, and avoids anything that sounds like marketing. Formal raises register without those scholarly tics — it's tuned for business writing, where confident assertion reads better than hedging. If you're writing a research paper, Academic. If you're writing an executive summary, Formal.
Standard sits one rung below Formal: cleaner wording, same register. Casual moves the other direction entirely.
When should you turn down the strength? When your input is already mostly formal and only needs polish. Subtle keeps your structure and only adjusts wording, which is usually what you want for a paragraph that's 80% there. Aggressive is for paragraphs written casually that need to come out fully professional.