The phrase "a formal convention" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to an established practice or standard that is recognized and followed in a specific context, often in formal settings.
Example: "In academic writing, adhering to a formal convention is essential for clarity and professionalism."
Alternatives: "an official standard" or "a formal guideline".
She estimated that Mr. Golisano would have received no more than 6percentt of a formal convention vote.
Altaic animals frequently display muscles delineated with dot and comma markings, a formal convention that may have derived from appliqué needlework.
Mrs. Bachmann angered many fellow Republicans after she demanded an investigation into radical Islamic influence in the United States government, very likely dooming her chances of getting a formal convention role.
Smith is a fictional character, of course, so his thought process as he runs is both an invention and, in a sense, a formal convention — a way for Sillitoe to structure his narrative.
But a play that rests its very plot on a formal convention of the period — the rigorous rules of the duel — cannot be excused for blatantly ignoring the manners and mores of the time when it suits the storytelling.
The surrender of Warsaw was thus not a formal convention, but rather the effect of lengthy negotiations.
Like Lee's film, it plays as a shotgun blast to the face of formal convention, it's stubbornly resistant to a single concrete interpretation, and it has a lot of very painful things to say about America today.
Its very lack of formal convention means that it is no more than an empty vessel, where authors can both listen to the sound of their own voice (sometimes for the first time, as in the case of Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia) and sound off on whatever moral or aesthetic theme they wish.
It was as if weighing the anchor of his homeland meant that Kundera had also freed himself from the bonds of formal convention.
There was no formal convention business beyond the arrival of 2,066 delegates -- mostly middle-aged white men and generally more conservative than the voters who gave Mr. Bush the nomination -- assembled in the city where Republicans have nominated five previous candidates, from John C. Fremont in 1856 through Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.
Next month delegations of state lawmakers will travel to Phoenix, Arizona, to attend what organizers say will be the first formal convention of states since the Civil War.
