Editorial Policy | Writer's Guidelines | Style Guide | Privacy Statement
The following living document details AlbertaJobcentre.ca’s elements of style. This style guide should be used in conjunction with Canadian Press Style. We welcome suggestions for additions to the content – please contact us.
Elements of Style
1. Abbreviations
We abbreviate Canadian provinces as follows:
- Northwest Territories: NT
- Yukon: YT
- British Columbia: BC
- Alberta: AB
- Saskatchewan: SK
- Manitoba: MB
- Ontario: ON
- Quebec: PQ
- New Brunswick: NB
- Nova Scotia: NS
- Prince Edward Island: PE
- Newfoundland: NF
- Nunavut: NU
Other abbreviations used include:
- Limited: Ltd.
- United States: US
- Decades: ’70s, ’80s, ’90s (note direction of apostrophe)
- Okay (not OK)
2. Acronyms
Any acronym must first be introduced in brackets after the full name it represents. In subsequent uses, we require only the acronym. For example:
- Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) supports this effort. HRDC has funded many such programs in the past.
3. Canadian Spellings
We are firm believers in the use of Canadian spellings. Despite what your American spell-checker may be telling you, please use Canadian spellings wherever possible, for example:
- centre
- colour
- favourite
- counselling
- millennium etc…
However, spell the following words this way:
- humorous
- glamorous
The exception to this rule is when the common-noun elements of a proper name are non-Canadian in original. In such cases, use the original spelling. For example:
- US Department of Labor (not Labour)
- the Lincoln Center (not Lincoln Centre)
- Pearl Harbor (not Harbour)
4. Capitalization
In article headings, capitalize all words, except for prepositions, conjunctions, and definite and indefinite articles, including:
- to, on, in, and, for, a, an, the
However, the first letter of a sentence should always be capped.
Other words that should be capped include:
- Census
- Internet
- Native (when referring to persons of aboriginal origin)
- the North (but not northern or southern Canada)
- Program (when referring to a specific program, such as The Professional Writing Program at Douglas College)
- Specific school grades: Grade 12
Please follow Canadian Press style rules on capitalization of people’s titles.
6. Citations and references to previously published work
- In articles that cite or refer to parts of previously published works, include the title and author of the work right after the quote or within the reference. Any other details about the cited work (publisher, date, etc) should be provided to AlbertaJobcentre.ca in a list of sources. However, only the title and author should appear in the article. For example:
- The 2005 book, Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, uses economics to answer questions about everyday life.
7. Email and web addresses
- Please use “website”, “webpage” and “email”.
- In Word documents, please omit the hyperlink on web addresses as well as the / (backslash) at the end of the URL.
- Please include www in URLs. Http:// is not necessary, although https:// is required for secure sites.
8. Hyphenation
Here are some examples of words that we hyphenate and words that we don’t. If all else fails, follow Canadian Press style.
- Hyphenated Words
23-year-old (as an adjective) co-worker
hands-on on-site
post-secondary self-esteem
word-of-mouth
- Words spelled as one word
boardroom checklist
cooperative coordinate/or
email filmmaker
fundraiser inbox
layoff lifelong
ongoing online
percent reevaluate
southeast twentysomething
underemployment upbeat
website webpage
workplace worksite
- Words spelled as two words (without a hyphen)
15 years old Baby Boomers
full time hard copy
health care high school
high tech in line (except for in-line skates)
job seeker life skills
part time toll free
work experience
* words ending in ‘ly’ are never hyphenated
* high tech, part time and full time are only hyphenated as modifiers, not as noun phrases.
9. Italicization
All publication titles and movie titles must be italicized.
10. Name references
The first mention of a person in an article should include their first and last names. Subsequent references to that person should use their last name only.
11. Numbers
- Numbers one to nine should be spelled out. 10 and up should be numerals.
- Toll free phone numbers should be completely hyphenated (1-800-888-8888).
- The word “percent’ should be spelled out, rather than be expressed with a symbol in main articles. The % symbol is okay in sidebars and grids
12. Punctuation
Serial Commas
- Generally, and especially in lists, we do not use a comma after the second-last item if it is followed by the word “and.” For example:
- I ate a cracker, an orange and a tomato.
Quotes
- When a word or phrase appears in quotation marks, all punctuation should be inside the quote marks. For example: …the “Baby Boomers,” and “Generation X.”
- Quotes within quotes should be framed within single quotation marks. For example: “So I said, ‘Hi, I’m here.’ ”
13. Time References
Numerical time references should include ‘am’ or ‘pm’ spelled without periods and in lower case. For example:
- 10 am, 1 pm, 11:45 am
14. Verb tenses
Direct quotes are always to be used with a verb in the present tense (such as “says” or “explains”), unless the quote originated from a written document, whereby the past tense (such as “said” or “explained”) may be used. For example:
- “I’m with her,” he says.
- “The unemployment rate has risen,” said the report.
When Making Your Submission…
- File Format
Please submit all articles in electronic format, preferably saved in Word, but if not, then saved as a rich text format (RTF) or text file. We prefer that submissions be e-mailed to us, either saved as an attachment in Word, or pasted into the body of the e-mail. We work in a PC environment and require attachments that are compatible with PCs.
- Formatting
Please include as little formatting as possible in your article, except the required elements mentioned in this style guide.
- Spacing
Please ensure sentences are single-spaced only, with one space between paragraphs. Do not indent paragraphs. Use only one space after punctuation – modern word-processing programs automatically adjust formatting so that you do not need to use two spaces.