CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.2e

ELAGrades 9–10Text Types and Purposes

The Standard

Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts

What This Standard Means

Students need to write informational pieces that sound formal, fair, and appropriate for the subject. They should avoid slang, personal attacks, casual wording, and unsupported opinions. They also need to match the habits of the field, like using evidence in history, precise terms in science, or literary terms in English.

Mastery looks like a steady, academic voice from start to finish. Claims are balanced, word choice is exact, and the writer does not drift into “I think” or emotional language. Students often get stuck sounding too conversational, overusing big words, or mixing personal opinion with objective explanation.

Ways to Teach It

Give students a casual paragraph and have them revise it into a formal science, history, or literary analysis paragraph.
Ask students to explain how the tone changes between a blog post, a lab report, and a literary essay on the same topic.
Use a three-sentence exit ticket where students replace informal phrases with formal, objective wording.
Bring in a newspaper article and a research abstract, then have students mark words that signal formal, discipline-specific writing.