If I don't know the kanji of a thing but I know the hiragana of it, can I just write the hiragana if I have to write it down? Is it a free choice? Or some rules or social formalities?
Answer
First, as @TheWanderingCoder states, sometimes hiragana can be ambiguous. かみ can be 神(God), 紙(Paper), or 髪(Hair) for example. So Kanji is required here to understand the intended meaning, even though there are situations where it is understood from context.
To answer your questions
Most of the time, yes as people will understand from context. I've seen people write 会議 as 会ギ on whiteboards before because 議 is a pain to write.
Be careful though, a big glob of Hiragana/Katakana is hard to read. Japanese speakers (readers?) "chunk" the text by Kanji, so too much Kana will take them longer to read.
1) There are modern preferences that exist, for example おいしい is often written in Hiragana and not as 美味しい. You can experiment with your preferred style as the choice can give a different persona, particularly when chatting/texting. Heavy use of Hiragana can come off as young and sometimes feminine.
2) Take this phrase that you will write at the bottom of every business email you write in Japanese よろしくおねがいいたします.
Quickly looking through my emails, the following patterns all occur:
よろしくお願いいたしますよろしくお願い致します宜しくお願い致します
The top being the least formal and the bottom being the most. Note though, the difference in formality is not that big. If I get an email with the 1st pattern vs the 3rd, it's not an insult or anything like that.
I'm pretty sure I've seen 宜しく御願い致します before too, which would be even more formal.
I personally use よろしくお願い致します, but on formal/serious emails I will use 宜しくお願い致します.
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