Q&A for How to Avoid Colloquial (Informal) Writing

Not at all! Although you want to write in a professional way that caters to your target audience, you don't want to write in a canned, boring way, either. You still want to your writing relatable and interesting to read!

Commas in essay are necessary to separate adjectives or other items, accentuate a break in the sentence, or divide sentence for independent judgments.

"Let's not" is not an especially formal phrase. "We should not" might be more appropriate.

Yes. A colloquial equivalent would be a truncated form of that: "Sure, will do," or perhaps, "Yep, I'll do that."

Write it as: "stands above the rest"; there is no need for the "out".

It is sometimes a very good word to use, but like anything, you don't want to overuse it.

It's OK as it stands, or you could say, "the cousin of Ethan's wife."

I wouldn't start a formal writing with however. I would use this word as the beginning of the next (second, third) paragraph, because of the meaning of "however". This is the way to present the opposite opinion that was presented in the first paragraph.

It would most likely be somewhat dependent on the context of the rest of the sentence. From what you have provided, the use of "am" without the "I" is suggestive of informal language, as in "am so pleased to chat with you". If you wish to be formal and accurate, you would say: "I am so pleased to chat with you."

"You and I" is used in the nominative case as the subjects of a verb. "You and me" is used in the objective case as the objects of a verb or a preposition.

Use it when writing a play. Otherwise, it's rarely necessary.

You could use the Latin abbreviation i.e. ("id est"), which means "that is" or "in other words."

You could say, "We hereby request a..."

A formal paper would format someone else's language as a quote.

The article suggests avoiding opinion terms such as "I think" and "should". So, for example, you could say "It would be beneficial to pay students to study." Or you could be more specific - e.g., "Paying students to study would benefit society in the long run" - depending on the focus of your paper.

Yes, "nowadays" is informal. "In this day and age" and "in modern day" are more formal options if you don't want to use "today."

Yes, although "like" is more informal than "such as."

It's not wrong and could be preferable to certain alternatives.

If you're sure you want to use sentence fragments, go ahead and use them. You'll just have to ignore the error messages.

It depends on the meaning: "I want to get a computer": obtain or purchase; "I hope I get a computer": receive; "I hope I don't get fat": become.

The easiest way to do it is to write the sentence exactly the way you would speak it in a formal setting.

Yes you can. Informal addressing would be calling them nicknames. If they have a full name (eg Christopher but people call them Chris), address them by their full name.