formality

The Three Lions have qualified for eight consecutive World Cups since missing out on USA '94, with participation increasingly regarded as a formality by supporters - but that has not always been the case.

A lot of hedge fund managers spent time chitchatting with their investors and treated their quarterly letters to them as a formality.

Some books read like hardcover screenplays, so easily translated to the movies that publishing them first as a novel almost seems like an unnecessary formality.

The stroke seems to have stripped away some of his old formality, leaving him more open, unguarded, even amused by his own lapses.

Discovery’s announcement was essentially a formality given the swirl of media reports around a potential deal.