What makes an English email formal or informal?
English has no Du/Sie distinction — register comes entirely from word choice: greeting and closing, full or contracted forms, and Latinate verbs versus phrasal verbs. Formal email writes "Dear Ms Weber … Kind regards"; informal writes "Hi Anna … Best".
- Formal: "Dear + Ms/Mr + surname", no contractions, "Kind regards".
- Informal: "Hi + first name", contractions, phrasal verbs, "Best".
- When in doubt, write neutral-professional — never rude, never stiff.
B1 · Business Writing · 10 minFormal or informal? Mastering email register in English.
A structured ten-slide lesson for B1 learners. Hear formal register in context, meet the formal-to-informal scale with a tutor, then practise greetings, closings and verb choice across six interactive drills before a final five-question quiz. The whole arc is under ten minutes and nothing requires a signup.
- CEFR levelB1 · Intermediate
- Time to completeAbout 10 minutes
- SkillsWriting, Reading, Listening, Speaking
- Bricks10 blocks
01 / 06
Why English emails work differently
German builds politeness into its grammar: you choose du or Sie before you have written a single word of content. English removed that switch. Every person you write to — the CEO, the new client, your closest teammate — is grammatically just you. That does not mean English has no formality; it means the formality has nowhere to live except in the words themselves. The greeting, the closing, the verbs you pick, whether you contract I am to I'm — each of these choices signals distance or closeness. This is why German learners so often misjudge the tone of their English emails: they look for one big switch and find none, when English actually offers dozens of small ones. Once you see register as a scale — formal, neutral, informal — rather than a yes/no decision, English emails become far easier to control.
02 / 06
The building blocks: greetings, closings, contractions
The register of an email is set by a handful of repeating parts. The greeting comes first: Dear Ms Weber is formal, Hello Anna is neutral, Hi Anna is informal — and in British English a comma follows the name, not an exclamation mark. The closing mirrors it: Yours sincerely and Kind regards sit at the formal end, Best regards in the middle, Best or Cheers among colleagues. In between, contractions do quiet work: a formal email writes I am writing and do not hesitate, while neutral and informal emails contract naturally (I'm, don't, can't). The crucial rule is consistency. An email that opens with Dear Ms Weber and closes with Cheers sends two contradictory signals, and the reader notices. Choose your register before you start typing, then let every part — greeting, body, closing — sit at the same point on the scale.
03 / 06
Verb choice: phrasal verbs vs Latinate verbs
English vocabulary has two historical layers, and email register runs along the divide. Short Germanic phrasal verbs — put off, set up, find out, get back to — are the language of conversation. Their Latin- and French-derived counterparts — postpone, arrange, enquire, respond — carry the formal register. So a teammate reads Can we put the call off?, while a client reads I would like to postpone the call. Other reliable pairs: ask for → request, look into → investigate, need → require, help → assist. Two warnings, though. First, neutral business English uses phrasal verbs freely — follow up, reach out and set up a call are perfectly professional. Second, stacking Latinate verbs does not make you sound more competent, just more distant; a wall of herewith and aforementioned reads as old-fashioned, not polite. Pick one or two formal verbs where they matter and keep the rest of the sentence plain.
04 / 06
Typical German-speaker traps: "Dear Sirs" and "Hello Mr Thomas"
Most register mistakes German speakers make come from transferring German conventions directly. The classic is Dear Sirs as a translation of "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren" — it sounds dated in modern business English and addresses only men. Write to a named person instead, use Dear Sir or Madam, or address the team (Dear Hiring Team). The second trap is the title-plus-first-name hybrid: Hello Mr Thomas for a man called Thomas Becker. Mr and Ms attach to the surname — Dear Mr Becker — never to the first name. Third, general over-formality: German business culture keeps more ceremonial distance than English, so a directly translated German email often reads colder than intended. English business email is warmer by default; a Hello plus first name is not disrespectful once contact is established. Finally, mixed registers — a formal opening followed by asap and smileys — signal carelessness more than friendliness.
05 / 06
Choosing the register: new client or long-term colleague?
Which register fits which situation? A first email to a new client, a job application, a complaint, or any message to someone senior you have never met: formal. Ongoing work with clients and partners you already know: neutral-professional — this is where the bulk of real business email lives. Quick notes to teammates you talk to daily: informal is fine and often expected. Two practical habits make the decision easy. First, when in doubt, choose neutral: Hello plus first name, contractions, Best regards. It is never rude and never stiff. Second, mirror the other side. If a client signs off Best, Claudia after two exchanges, you may step down one level and reply in kind; if they stay with Kind regards, Claudia Weber, so do you. Register is a relationship signal, and letting the more senior party set the level is the safest strategy in English business culture.
06 / 06
Declining politely — in both registers
Saying no is where register matters most, because a refusal lands harder than a request. English cushions refusals with fixed phrases, and each register has its own set. Formal, to a client: Unfortunately, I am unable to attend the meeting on Thursday. Would it be possible to reschedule? — note unable to instead of can't, and a question instead of a flat no. Neutral: I'm afraid Thursday doesn't work for me — could we look at Friday instead? The phrase I'm afraid is one of the hardest-working politeness tools in English and fits almost every register. Informal, to a teammate: Sorry, can't make Thursday — Friday OK? All three messages refuse the same meeting; none of them uses the word no. That is the pattern worth copying: in English business email, you decline by offering an alternative, and the register decides how much cushioning goes around it.