Pro forma

Pro forma is an adjective that means standard or done as a matter of politeness. Our word of the day comes directly from a Latin phrase that translates to ‘for form’s sake.’ It’s often used to describe the form of documents. I could tell the letter supposedly sent by the company offering a million dollar settlement was a fake because it wasn’t written in a pro forma manner. A legitimate letter of that kind would have been written in a far different way.