Formatting

Here is a breakdown of how to approach the formatting of everything from abbreviations to zebras.

Our house style

We’re sticking to our Canadian roots, here, so jump in the canoe. We use Canadian English wherever possible and reference the Chicago Manual of Style. We use Urban Dictionary whenever possible. Just kidding. We use the Oxford Dictionary.

Citations

Books, major works, magazines, and newspapers are italicized when not linked.
Articles and short works are enclosed in quotation marks when not linked.

Commas

Stick with serial commas (they come before the “and” in the last list element) except in article titles. Article titles will take the ampersand and drop the serial comma.

Company & publication names

A name is your dignity. Pay attention, friend.

Note how companies capitalize and refer to their own names in digital examples (watch for compound words and unique capitalizations).
Don’t emphasize definite articles. E.g. It’s the Huffington Post, not The Huffington Post.

Quotations

Use Chicago style to determine quotation rules.

Periods go before quotations.
Block quotes are for long passages.
Double quotations are like air quotes: you don’t really “buy them” or they’re “special.”
Single quotations are used for quoting quotations.

Sentence case

For headlines, we stick to sentence case. Capitalize the first letter of the first word, any proper nouns. That’s it.

Spelling

Canadian spelling, please.

Technical specifications

We use Markdown as our markup language.

Abbreviations

Yes	No
AKA	aka or a.k.a
i.e.,	ie or i.e.
PMP	P.M.P.
GIF (And it’s pronounced with a hard G, dammit)	gif

Article titles, headlines, and subheads

For title, headlines, and subheads, stick to sentence case.

Capitalize the first letter of the first word and proper nouns
No terminal punctuation unless it’s a question mark
No serial commas for article titles; use ampersands (&)
Serial commas for article headings; no ampersands
If no serial comma, use an ampersand in article headlines

Heading level	Usage
H1	Article titles
H2	Subheads and secondary headlines
H3–H6	Break your content into smaller, more readable chunks

Contractions

Wherever possible, we stick with informal contractions:

Preferred	Less preferred
don’t	do not
won’t	will not

Punctuation

	Yes	No
Apostrophes	’tis the ’80s George’s summer Several Georges Delores’ purse	tis, 'tis, or ‘tis the 80s, the ‘80s, or the 80’s Georges summer Several George’s Delores’s purse
Divide	3 ÷ 5	3 / 5
Ellipses	…	... (three periods)
Em-dashes	Beans—and I don’t mean green ones.	Beans – and I don’t mean green ones.
En-dashes	Dec 1^st–5^th	Dec 1^st — 5^th
Minus	3 − 5	3 - 5 (dash), 3 – 5 (en dash), or 3 — 5 (em dash)
Multiply	3 × 5	3 x 5, 3 X 5, or 3 * 5
Numbered lists	1.	1 or 1.) or A.
Ordinals	1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd	1st, 2nd, 3rd
Parenthesis	Whenever possible, put them inside a sentence (like a champ).	Don’t separate them. (Like this)
Pluralizing names	Seinfelds Beneses (add ‘es’ when ending with s, x, z, ch, or sh)	Seinfield’s Benes’
Serial commas (AKA the Oxford comma)	George, Elaine, and I	George, Elaine and I

Lists

Ordered or unordered.

Complete sentence? Apply sentence case.
Full sentences begin with a capital and end with terminal punctuation.
Incomplete sentences don’t have capitalization or terminal punctuation.
For a sentence featuring two or more list items, end each (except the last) with a semicolon (;), add an “and” to the final item. Finish off with terminal punctuation.

Linking

A link should contain a complete contextual clue for what it is referencing.

You can do with this hidden text if needed. Here’s more detail on hidden text.

Yes	No
Read this article about furry camels.	Read this article

Word capitalization

Yes	No
internet	Internet
ecommerce	Ecommerce

Word choice

Yes	No
email	e-mail or electronic mail
colour	color
sitemap	site map
website	web site
wireframes	wire frames

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