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Some things in .NET are called “formatters” – BinaryFormatter, SoapFormatter.
Others are called “serializers” – XmlSerializer, DataContractSerializer.
Why the difference?
A bit tenuous, but there is a subtle difference. There are 17 concrete classes in the .NET framework that format XML. These formatters are all hidden, you get an instance to them with a method like XmlWriter.Create(). Same for DataContractSerializer, the actual formatting is done by, say, an XmlDictionaryWriter instance.
No such indirection for BinaryFormatter or SoapFormatter, they take care of the formatting themselves. In other words, a Formatter formats, a Serializer uses a formatter.