What makes a text formal?

[dimmy18]

I was doing last years VCAA paper and question 4 talked about the formality of part 2.

How does adding dates or using ellipsis add to formality?

I thought formality was how 'proper' or how 'sophisticated' language is...

[iloveschool]

ellipsis contributes to reducing social distance which makes the text less formal, but factors such as lexical choice (slang/jargon) sentence structure (simple) and contractions (don't instead of do not) all make a text less formal

hope i helped!

[dimmy18]

how about acting dates, I don't get it

Here's the sample answer that scored high marks

Part 2 contains examples of the passive voice, ‘Seats are limited’ (lines 17 and 18) and omits the agent, not stating who is
limiting the sale of seats thus using a syntactic device to create formality. There are also examples of lexemes that are related
specifically to travel and airlines such as, ‘peak days’ (line 18). This is a jargon expected of this type of discourse and again
brings formality to the text. Finally, figures and dates are used a lot as you would expect in such small print, these stress the
conditions that are in place and again add to the formality. E.g. ‘1 Dec and 16 Jan.’

[papertissue]

I think dates written in that format are typical of formal print or 'Terms & Conditions'... that's what you could say to further argue that point, anyway. I wouldn't bring it up myself.