Lesson · E.2.2
Matching language to your audience
How purpose and audience decide the right register, formal or informal, and how to spot a passage that misjudges the reader it is written for.
ObjectiveE.2.2Read2 minExam weightKnowledge of Language ≈ 33% of English and Language Usage
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See editions and pricing →What you will be able to do
- Identify the purpose and audience behind a passage.
- Match register, formal or informal, to that audience.
- Spot a passage whose tone mismatches its stated reader.
What the lesson concludes
- Identify the purpose and the audience before judging the language, since the same words can be right for one reader and wrong for another.
- Formal writing avoids contractions and slang and keeps a respectful, neutral distance.
- Informal writing uses contractions and a conversational tone because the writer and reader already have a relationship.
- A mismatch, casual words in a formal document or stiff words in a personal note, is what these questions are testing you to catch.