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The informal word is the P, and four ninths of the normal word. It’s in the latest Chambers, and also in Collins Online Dictionary.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/

The other word doesn’t begin with C, but has a different abbreviation for about

All done now (as long as the C is an O). I was led astray by having a 5 letter word in my 2nd row, the wrong 2nd word in the first column and not spotting the BIR thing. Definitely a difficult puzzle with a lot of odd words and a little bit of GWIT. I was pretty confident about the P, but I needed to sort out my grid to finally confirm it.

The C is not an O, Gitto. The O form is not listed as a verb in Chambers.

And there is a five-letter word in the second row

No, it's an A. Once again I had the wrong word at the end of the 2nd row!! That is the GWIT bit that I referred to.

It sounds like you’re there 👍🏻

I’ve got a full grid (just the A-F bit, haven’t dug into the second paragraph of the preamble yet) but there’s one four-letter answer I just can’t parse. Could anyone point me in the right direction on the fourth answer of E? The definition makes sense to me in a slightly slangy way but I don’t understand the wordplay at all.

The definition is two words, beginning with “of”. A word meaning the next two words has its first letter dropped.

Just for clarity, can we safely assume that the first letter of the 4 letter answers goes top left of its respective grid? I really hope I can assume that much at least. A nudge for B4 would be very helpful too. Is it simply two synonyms one running backwards? TA

Mullingar, that can’t be inferred from the preamble. As explained in #28, there are no two-letter words in the full grid, so there must be a bar between the first and second cells of the top row. That in turn means clue A1 begins and ends in the top row. But whether it begins in the first or second column needs to be deduced.

B4 is not two synonyms backwards. It splits 1,3, and the last word of the clue is the (verbal) definition. The first word is “about”