Canadian Press Style

Canadian Press Style Purpose 

Canadian Press (CP) Style was created for staff of the wire service of the same name. Although it was originally developed for news writing and reporting, it is now used by a wide range of Canadian organizations because of its focus on clear, concise and accessible writing. It is an ideal style to use when communicating with the public via reports, presentations, newsletters, web content, social media and marketing materials. The following advice is drawn from The Canadian Press Stylebook and The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling.

Basic Grammar and Punctuation

Canadian Press Style emphasizes the use of short, direct sentences with one or two clauses. Longer sentences should be separated into shorter ones to be understood more easily and quickly.

• More than 200 people attended yesterday’s city council meeting. Most spoke against the city’s plans to sell Bridge Park to an industrial developer.

Commas are only used to join clauses with different subjects into one sentence.

• Fatima weeded the garden, and Leslie cut the grass.
• Fatima weeded the garden and then planted the bulbs she’d bought at the garden centre.

Only one space is used after a period at the end of a sentence. 

Do not use the serial (Oxford) comma to separate items in a list.

• She found two journal articles, one government report and three books on her topic.

Quotations

Double quotation marks are used to signify an exact, word-for-word quotation. If you are not sure that you have captured a quotation verbatim, you should paraphrase it instead. Double quotation marks are also used to note the titles of books, movies, plays, TV shows and songs.

• “This is a dream come true,” said Brantford playwright Dee Luciani. Her new comedy, “Love and Lasagna,” opens tonight in Paris.

Use single quotation marks to mark one quotation inside of another or the title of a work of art inside of a quotation.

• “Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ was my mother’s favourite song,” said Hong. “She would always say, ‘Nobody writes a love song better than Dolly.’”

Voice

Use the active voice as much as possible, as it results in shorter, clearer writing that is transparent about who did what.

• City councillors voted to increase soccer field user fees by $50 next year (not: Soccer field user fees will increase by $50 next year).

Use plain, everyday words that are widely understood instead of formal language and jargon. Avoid adverbs by choosing better verbs that can stand on their own.

Citations and Attributions

Canadian Press Style does not use academic citations. It prefers writers to attribute data, quotations and information from other sources in the main text. When a direct quotation precedes attribution (the source of the material), use a comma at the end of the quotation, inside the double quotation marks.

• “We will review the matter and report back,” said the president.
• “Inquiries about a municipal composting program increased by 25 per cent in 2023,” according to the report.

Canadian Spellings

Use Canadian spellings instead of American or British spellings.

• Colour, favour, rigour, behaviour, odour, centre, analyze, grey, metre, enrol, manoeuvre

Numbers, Ages, Dates and Currency

Write out numbers between zero and nine. Use numerals for numbers 10 and larger. When numbers between 21 and 99 are written out, use a hyphen.

• The team surveyed 154 people over six months. Seventy-four of those were women.

Use numerals for numbers up to 999,999. Then, use words unless absolute precision is required.

• She won $400,000 in the lottery.
• The $3.5-million project will require contributions from all levels of government.

Numbers at the beginning of a sentence must spelled out, no matter how large or small.

• Twelve thousand four hundred and twenty-two people voted in this year’s student election.
• One person attended the workshop.

Write out per cent as two words instead of one.

• He said 75 per cent of buildings on campus passed the air quality test.

Write out ages under 10 unless they appear right after someone’s name.

• Albert was six when he got his first dog. It was a gift from his sister, Jean, 17.
• The 25-year-old bridge would easily last another 30 years, said the inspector.

Dates are written with numerals. Eras can be made plural in two ways:

• The company opened in the 1940s. The recipe, however, was created in the ’20s.

When referring to currency, put the dollar sign before the numeral.

• She paid $6 for her daily coffee. That means she spends about $2,184 on coffee every year.

Gender, Race and Ethnicity

• Confirm how your sources wish to be described with respect to their gender and pronouns—she/her, he/him, they/them, etc. All are acceptable in Canadian Press Style.
• Black is capitalized when used in a racial context, just like Caucasian, Hispanic, etc.
• Indigenous is capitalized when referring to Indigenous peoples. It is preferable to identify individuals by their group, territory, First Nation or people according to their preferences.

For more information, you can consult The Canadian Press.

Bruce Gillespie, Writing Services, Wilfrid Laurier University, CC By-NC 2023