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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Old Miss Willers is a bit of a stickler about formal English.

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If you’re ever having a conversation with her, and you end a sentence with a preposition…

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you’re liable to end up with a face full of cane. [Girl is hit with Miss Willers cane]

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So…while there’s a time and a place for informal writing… Miss Willers is not a fan.

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You know how it is. When texting a friend, your writing has a different tone than when [Girl texting a friend]

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you send a note of thanks to your grandma for that… lovely...charming Christmas sweater she got you.

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Informal writing sounds like conversation.

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It’s almost like shorthand. Instead of saying “arrive” you might say [Girl parks car outside a house]

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something casual like “show up.” Instead of “children” you might say “kids.”

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“Find out” instead of “discover”… “go up” instead of “increase…

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“I think” instead of “in my opinion”… “in a nutshell” instead of “to summarize”…

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“plus” instead of “furthermore”… Or, “Yo, bird…I’m just grill-hoppin’

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and takin’ in the sun feathers” instead of… [two birds on a wire as the sun sets]

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…well, huh, we seriously have no idea what that might mean.

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So yeah, the downside is that, most of the time, very few other people know what you're

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talking about… …which can be a problem. [girl given an F grade for a writing test]

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When you write something formal, such as an essay, you should switch to a formal voice,

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so people can grasp what you're saying… …and so Old Miss Willers can keep her cane [Boy writing a paragraph and Miss Willers stood with a cane]

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where it belongs. By using formal English, you can give your

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speaker greater authority… …express complex and technical ideas more [Girl reading a technical journal of English book]

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effectively… …and really take the time to flesh out what

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you’re trying to say, using terms that any reader will understand.

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Okay…almost any reader.

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Okay, so…a few rules…

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When writing formally, contractions are a big no-no. [Coop discussing formal english rules]

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Say “do not” instead of don't and “cannot” instead of can't.

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There’s no slang in formal writing, either…ya dig? [Boy hit in the face with a cane]

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Sorry, Miss Willers. Yeah…formal writing is meant to last…

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a long time. The thing about popular expressions is that

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they come and go. Your grandma and grandpa probably said "groovy."

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We’re not even kidding. They said things like "out of sight" and "far out." [Girl laughing at her grandparents]

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It’s like a whole other language…

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Of course, it goes without saying that formal English requires the use of standard punctuation

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and grammar. You’ll have to dot your i’s, cross your [Girl inputting punctuation to a sentence]

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t’s and please, please, please use the right type of “there.”

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Whenever you read something written in formal English…

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…it should be a signal to you that you’ll be reading about a serious subject.

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That doesn’t mean it has to be about death and destruction… [A boy with an orange arm cast in a doctors room and death appears]

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…but…it’s at least going to be about some important topic or another that calls

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for clean, precise and professional language. Besides, if you don’t want everything to

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be about death and destruction… …we suggest you don’t do anything else

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to anger Miss Willers… [Miss Willers looking for a larger cane]

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