The Canadian Style
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Chapters
- - Close Abbreviations
- Introduction to Abbreviations
- General guidelines and observations
- Periods
- Plurals
- Capital letters and hyphens
- Titles used with personal names
- Military abbreviations
- University degrees, professional designations, military decorations, honours, awards and memberships
- Geographical names
- Addresses: streets and buildings; points of the compass
- Latitude and longitude
- Parts of a book or document
- Latin terms
- Scientific and technical terms
- Corporate names
- Acronyms and initialisms
- Number and percentage symbols
- Ampersand
- Monetary units
- Months and days
- Time of day and elapsed time
- Time zones
- The International System of Units (SI)
- The imperial system
- Business terms, expressions and symbols
- + Hyphenation: Compounding and Word Division
- + Spelling
- + Capitalization
- + Numerical Expressions
- + Italics
- + Punctuation
- + Quotations and Quotation Marks
- + Reference Matter
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- + Reports and Minutes
- + Usage
- + Plain Language
- + Elimination of Stereotyping in Written Communications
- + Geographical Names
- + Revision and Proofreading
- + French Typographical Rules
- - Close Abbreviations
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1.25 Business terms, expressions and symbols
Terms are often abbreviated for the purpose of conserving space in routine business correspondence. The following are common abbreviations used in tables and on business forms:
- acct.
- account
- bal.
- balance
- Assn.
- Association
- bldg.
- building
- CEO
- chief executive officer
- dis.
- discount
- cont.
- continued
- dtd.
- dated
- ea.
- each
- fwd.
- forward
- FY
- fiscal year
- G.M.
- general manager
- gr.
- gross
- hdlg.
- handling
- ins.
- insurance
- max.
- maximum
- Ltd.
- Limited
- n.d.
- no date
- min.
- minimum
- pd.
- paid
- oz.
- ounce(s)
- recd.
- received
- qty.
- quantity
- treas.
- treasury, treasurer
- sec.
- secretary
- V.P.
- vice-president
- whsle.
- wholesale
The following is a list of symbols for terms used in business correspondence and in tabular and statistical material:
- at
- @
- number (before a figure)
- #
- and
- &
- pounds (after a figure)
- #
- percent
- %
- feet
- ’
- dollar(s)
- $
- inches; ditto
- ’’
- cent(s)
- ¢
- paragraph
- ¶
- degree(s)
- °
- section
- §
- equals
- =
- by; multiplied by
- ×
Note that a space is usually required before and after the symbols @, =, & and ×:
- Yearwood & Boyce
- 2 shirts @ $19.95 each
Business terms, expressions and symbols, Exception
No extra space is required for upper-case abbreviations or in e-mail addresses:
- R&D at AT&T
- sales@wordlink.ca
Note also that no space is required between figures and the symbols %, ¢, #, ’, ’’:
- 10% deficit reduction
- nearly 75¢ a pound
- 43# per bag
- 159’ × 259’ deck
Do not leave any space after the symbols $, #, ¶, § when they precede a figure:
- less than $278
- as mentioned in ¶21
- package #3412
- Refer to §1.28.
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