If so, I was wondering how to rephrase the part more casually – in a way fit for an everyday kind of conversation. Many thanks.
Woman: They would not ordinarily go to such lengths to enlist a new recruit. ****That ****they *have *is evidence of their high regard for you.
Man: **That **a capable adventurer like you would be a valuable addition to their crew is beyond question.
Yes, they both sound very formal.
Woman: They wouldn’t usually do that much to enlist a new recruit. They obviously regard you highly.
Man: Nobody would ever say that a capable adventurer like you wouldn’t be a valuable addition to their crew.
This is just my opinion, but it sounds perfectly okay to me.
If there is a problem with it (and I’m not sure there is), it’s not that it sounds “formal”; it’s that the word “that” can be used in so many different ways that it could be confusing to start a spoken sentence with it. The person listening wouldn’t know, at first, what role it was going to be playing and might get thrown off trying to parse the sentence. In the interest of clarity, it might be better to change it to something like “The fact that they have is evidence of their high regard for you.”
I don’t think the second example is actually so confusing. (It’s what we sometimes call “front-loading” a sentence.) When we are listening, we don’t fall into the unnatural practice of parsing word-by-word. And when we are reading naturally, we don’t do that either. Normally we process language in chunks. It’s just that at this moment we are calling attention to the word for the sake of the OP.
But I agree that in conversation and most written business communication, it’s very common to use The fact that … This really is more to give emphasis, than to avoid confusion. It should be noted, however, that many who give advice on formal writing style frown upon the fact that.
As for the first example, I don’t think it is particularly formal either. However, if you wish to make it more causal, I think many would say it like this:They would not ordinarily go to such lengths to enlist a new recruit. It shows that they have high regard for you.
I think any formality has nothing to do with your use or “that.” Here is a less formal version of your first sentence: “They wouldn’t normally go to so much trouble for a new recruit. That they have means they are really impressed.”
Still starts the next sentence with “that,” but feels much less formal. Still, you can further simplify to make it feel more natural: “They wouldn’t normally go to so much trouble for a new recruit. They must be really impressed.”
It’s not really the removal of “that”, just that shortening the sentences makes it feel less formal. Likewise, your second example uses two clauses to say what would normally be said in only one: “The crew could definitely use a capable adventurer like you.”
If you don’t mind slightly improper English, you could use replace “like you” with “like yourself” and be even less formal.