Basic CP Styles
General capitalization rules:
Capitalize all proper names, trade names, government departments and agencies of government, names of associations, companies, clubs, religions, languages, nations, races, places and addresses. Otherwise lowercase is favoured. However, all provincial legislatures and city councils are lowercase.
Capitalize formal titles, but only when directly preceding a name. Prime Minister Paul Martin, Energy Minister Joe Blow said … Lowercase them when standing alone or set off from a name with commas: the energy minister; the energy minister Joe Blow; Joe Blow, the minister of energy.
Lowercase occupational titles and job descriptions: UVic president Emoke Szathmary; author Tom Wolfe; dean Robert O’Kell.
Don’t refer to professors as “Dr.” unless the title is specially relevant to their expertise ex. If they’re a medical doc speaking about medicine.
In general, don’t use courtesy titles like Mr, Miss, etc.
Capitalize widely recognized descriptive geographic regions (the West, the Far North, Western Europe). Lowercase more general cases (southern Manitoba).
Capitalize the full names of political parties, but lowercase “party” in short forms like Liberal party (Liberal Party of Canada).
Lowercase university departments and faculties: faculty of education.
Web on its own is a proper noun, but use website not Website or web site. Internet is capitalized.
Avoid arbitrary capitalization, for example don’t cap “university” only “University of Victoria,” although we tend to use UVic.
Dashes, ellipses and colons:
Use an ellipsis (three periods) to indicate an omission from a text or quotation. One can be used at beginning, inside or at the end of a sentence (Except in news stories—only inside).
Add spaces before and after ellipses, but at the Martlet not in between ( ... )
Use em-dashes (—) (make them by holding shift, option and -) to break up long sentences or sometimes instead of commas. Use short dashes (-) when hyphenating words.
Use en-dashes (–) (make them by holding option and -) to separate numbers (dates, sports scores, etc).
Avoid using dashes next to colons, semicolons and commas.
Use a colon, rather than a comma, to introduce a direct quotation longer than a short sentence.
Use a colon when introducing lists. Do not capitalize the first letter of a sentence that follows a colon unless it is a quote or extra emphasis is desired.
A two-word noun is not hyphenated when alone. But in general, when it becomes descriptive, it is hyphenated. Ex. Health care vs. health-care system
Other punctuation
Punctuation always goes inside quotations. (Except for colons and semicolons at close of quotes) Ex. She was referring to “the most serious charge”: murder.
Use a semicolon to separate statements too closely related to stand as separate sentences.
Numbers, dates and times
Number usage: zero to nine written out, 10 and up as numerals (except in headlines). The same goes for examples like first, second, third, etc. and 10th, 11th. Make sure “th” is not raised. For example, 10th not 10th. Times should be written 12 p.m. not 12:00 PM.
Numbers at the beginning of a sentence are written out.
Don’t write “th” on dates, so Sept. 16 not Sept. 16th. Write out full name of month when used by itself without specific date (Sept. 16, September 2005)
When a sentence ends with a time (12 p.m.), an additional period must be used.
Omit periods from currency abbreviations ex. $4 US not $4 U.S.
Italics
Italicize titles of albums, magazines, papers, books, art exhibits, movies and television shows but place titles of songs or art pieces in double quotation marks.
Headlines
In headlines and subheads, only the first word is capitalized unless there are proper names.
Use single quotation marks when including quotes in headlines, subheads and pull quotes, not double marks.
Make all numbers into numerals, even those under 10. Use % not per cent (only in headlines, always use per cent in body).
Pull quotes
Include only one to three sentences in a pull quote, not whole paragraphs. Avoid using italics when quoting someone (can use single quotes sometimes to imply what they might have said).
General
Stories should not include website addresses unless they are purely meant as information for the reader. In general, do not include websites of interest groups or commercial products.
Refer to websites such as Google (that are company names) as Google.com, but include the www for cited reports etc.
In general, names of metric units should be written out in full.
Names of bands or teams take singular verbs unless they end in ‘s.’ Ex. Radiohead is great. The Minnesota Wild is a boring team. BUT: The Bisons are lousy. The Weakerthans are special.
“It's” is a contraction for “it is.” “Its” is possessive singular. Restrain yourself to communicating one thought per sentence. In general, avoid using “ly” words like generally, really.
Other spelling/style usage rules
• periods are followed by only one space, not two
• “First Nations” and “Aboriginal Peoples” are capitalized but not aboriginal
• $463 million not 463 million dollars
• 7,000 not 7000
• realize and organize and analyze, not realise, organise, analyse
• defence and practice not defense (but defensive) and practise
• Canadian spelling: Travelling and cancelled not traveling and canceled
• separate double vowels: Co-ordinator not coordinator
• write “tuition fees” not simply “tuition”
• say doctorate or doctoral student not PhD
• centre not center
• frontline not front-line
• deregulation not de-regulation
• online not on line or on-line
• honour and honourable but honorary not honourary
• per cent not % or percent
• e-mail not email
• Internet and Net are proper nouns (capitalized)
• $447-million-a-year
• 14-year-old
• 11-and-a-half
• handmade and home-made (no spaces)
• Exchange District (proper name capitalized)
Content provided by the Martlet Publishing Society, with files from CUP.
