Form & Register

Form & Register

You can have the sharpest argument in the room, but write it in the wrong **voice** and it falls flat. A slangy letter to an MP and a stiff blog for teenagers both lose marks. Every viewpoint task hands you three things, and two of them decide your voice: • **Form**: the *type* of text you must produce, an article, a letter, a speech, a blog. Each has conventions the examiner is looking for. • **Audience**: who is reading. This sets your **register**, meaning how formal or informal your language is. • **Purpose**: what you want them to think or do by the end. **AO5** explicitly rewards matching form and register to the task, so this is not decoration. It is marks.

Read the task

Here is a writing task. It names all three things at once. Tap the part that tells you WHO you are writing for.

• Write a letter
• to your local councillor
• arguing that the town's youth centre should be kept open.

The usual forms

Four forms come up again and again, and each carries conventions the examiner ticks off before reading a word of your argument:

Match each form to its opening

What is missing?

A student writes a speech for a school assembly. It opens "The school day starts far too early for teenagers" and ends "That is why the day should begin at half past nine." The argument is strong and well organised. Which convention of the FORM has been missed?

• It never addresses the listeners directly, at the opening or the close
• It does not have a headline
• It does not open "Dear..." or end with a sign-off
• It uses full sentences instead of bullet points

The register dial

Register is how formal your language is, and it runs on a dial rather than a switch. Neither end is "better": the skill is turning the dial to the reader in front of you, and then **not moving it** halfway through.

Pitch the register

You are writing a speech for a school assembly of fellow students, persuading them to join a club. Which register fits best?

• Warm and lively, speaking directly to your peers, but still clear and structured
• Extremely formal and stiff, as if addressing a High Court judge
• Packed with slang and in-jokes only your closest friends would follow
• Cold and impersonal, with no direct address at all

Sincerely or faithfully?

A tiny convention, and examiners reward it because so few candidates get it right: • If you **named** the person, as in "Dear Ms Osei", sign off **"Yours sincerely"**. • If you did **not** know the name, as in "Dear Sir or Madam", sign off **"Yours faithfully"**. The memory hook is that you never want two words starting with the same letter: **S**ir never goes with **s**incerely. Get the opening right and the sign-off follows from it automatically.

Write to your MP

You are writing a formal letter to your MP, Ms Alani Osei, whose name you know. Make the right choices.

• How should you open the letter?
• What register should the body of the letter use?
• You opened with "Dear Ms Osei". How should you sign off?

Spot the slip

This is from a formal letter to a council. "I am writing to express my concern about the proposed closure of the youth centre. Loads of us reckon it would be a massive mistake, and I would be grateful if you would reconsider." Which phrase breaks the register?

• "Loads of us reckon it would be a massive mistake"
• "I am writing to express my concern"
• "the proposed closure of the youth centre"
• "I would be grateful if you would reconsider"

Rank the openings

For a formal LETTER to your headteacher arguing for a later school start, rank these openings from WEAKEST to STRONGEST fit.

• A: "OMG school starts way too early, it's honestly a joke lol."
• B: "I think school should start later because I am always really tired."
• C: "Dear Mrs Grant, school should start later because students are tired in the mornings."
• D: "Dear Mrs Grant, I am writing to propose that the school day begin thirty minutes later, and to set out the benefits for students' wellbeing and attendance."

One viewpoint, three voices

Here is the same argument, that the town's youth centre should stay open, opened three ways: **To a councillor (letter):** "Dear Ms Osei, I am writing to ask you to reconsider the proposed closure of the Wenlock Road youth centre." **To students (speech):** "Good morning. Put your hand up if you have ever spent a Friday night at the youth centre. Now imagine next Friday, with the doors locked." **To blog readers (blog):** "They are closing the youth centre. Not next year. In March. And almost nobody has noticed." The viewpoint has not moved an inch. What changed is the form and the register, and that is the whole of AO5.

Write the opening

Exam practice. Write the opening of a formal letter to your headteacher, Mr Idowu, arguing that the school should introduce a cycle-to-school scheme. Two or three sentences is enough. Include:

• the correct opening for a letter to someone whose name you know
• a first sentence that states your purpose in Standard English
• a formal register held all the way through, with no contractions or slang

Voice mastered

Every viewpoint task names a _____ and an audience, and AO5 rewards matching both. A letter to someone whose name you know ends "Yours _____", while a speech opens by addressing its listeners _____. Pitch the _____ to the reader and hold it there: one slangy sentence in a formal letter costs marks however strong the argument is.