Better Writing the CP Way

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Courtesy of the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling style guide...

1. Over-capitalization and over-punctuation is a chronic disease.

Capitalize all proper names, government departments and agencies, trade names, names of organizations, religions, languages, races, places and addresses. Avoid the comma splice (using a comma where a period is required). There's no need to hyphenate adverbs ending in -ly (e.g. brightly lit room), established foreign terms (10 per cent increase) or established compound nouns (high school teacher).

2. Writers love abbreviations and buzzwords. Readers don't.

Use only abbreviations that are familiar to your audience. When in doubt, spell it out. Writers use "insider references" entirely too much. Think about your audience. Are they likely to all understand? Or is it only understood by a small segment of the population immersed in the culture that produced it?

3. Don't try to reproduce corporate logos in text form.

In a branding-mad world where the line between corporate logos and corporate names are blurring, CP capitalizes proper names for clarity (IPod not iPod) and capitalizes only the first letters of all-caps promotional and corporate names (Visa not VISA). We follow mixed capitalization for readability (MuchMusic) and drop unnecessary punctuation such as exclamation marks (Bravo not Bravo!). [I'm not sure why they chose IPod over Ipod. --Cam]

4. Use Canadian spellings and be careful of common word mix-ups.

Canadians use centre, not center; cheque not check; manoeuvre not maneuver and travelled not traveled. An effect is a result, but to have an influence is to affect. Alternately is first one and then the other, whereas alternatively is providing a choice. Ensure is to make sure, but assure is to remove worry or uncertainty. [Insure is to have insurance a thing or person. It's means 'it is' whereas its should be used similarly to 'his' or 'hers'. --Cam]

5. New CP style rulings.

Nearly 100 updates were made to the latest edition of Caps and Spelling, which lists hundreds of the most troublesome words and helps ensure accuracy and consistency when it comes to abbreviations, hyphenated and compound words, correct names of Canadian corporations and newsmakers, Internet terms, pop culture references and more. Updates included changes to CP style from paralyse to paralyze, Nfld. to N.L., CAT scan to CT scan and twentysomething to 20-something.