17 French Typographical Rules

17.01 French Typographical Rules—Introduction

In Canada, English documents often contain French-language words, phrases, names, titles, quotations, abstracts and bibliographic references. This appendix gives the basic rules of French typography. If you follow them when writing or revising, you will ensure that French-language material is correctly presented.

For further information, see Le guide du rédacteur.¹

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17.02 French Typographical Rules—Acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations

(a) Use upper-case letters; do not use periods:

• OTAN
  • Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord (NATO)
• SEE
  • Société pour l’expansion des exportations (Export Development Corporation)

(b) Do not retain the accent on initial letters:

• CEE
  • Communauté économique européenne

(c) The gender of an acronym is normally that of the initial noun:

• le BIT
  • Bureau international du travail

But acronyms from another language take the gender of the French equivalent of the generic noun:

• le GATT
  • General Agreement (accord) on Tariffs and Trade
• la BBC
  • British Broadcasting Corporation (société)

(d) Use a period with the abbreviations for Monsieur and Messieurs, but not with those for Madame and Mesdames:

• M. Ladouceur
• MM. Jalbert et Roussel

but

• Mme Fortier
• Mmes Joanisse et René

Note 1

When inserting any of these abbreviations into English text, add a period:

• Mmes. Sauvé and Legros have yet to express their opinion.

Note 2

• Messrs. is the English equivalent of MM.

Note 3

• The French title Madame may refer to unmarried as well as married women.

17.03 French Typographical Rules—Word division

Divide a word at the end of a line as follows:

• between two consonants (car-gaison, ex-caver, dic-taphone);
• before a consonant separating two vowels (cargai-son, poly-culture);
• between the two parts of a compound (bloc-moteur, coûts-bénéfices);
• between recognizable logical components of a word (électro-statique; trans-action);
• between two vowels in compounds, unless the second vowel belongs to the first part of the compound (extra-ordinaire, ré-unir but oléo-duc).

See 2.04 Compound adjectives; adjectives and participles in compounds(j) for information on the hyphenation of French words used as compound adjectives.

17.04 French Typographical Rules—Capitalization

(a) Capitalize nord, sud, est and ouest when included in the name of a building, geographical feature, address, region, state, territory, continent or part of a continent:

• la rive Sud
• la Caroline du Nord
• le Grand Nord
• l’Amérique du Sud
• la tour Est
• le cap Nord
• la rivière Nicolet Sud-Ouest
• rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest

For further information on the treatment of French-language place names, see Chapter 15.

Do not capitalize these words when they represent a point of the compass, a direction or a part of a building or other entity:

• le nord géographique
• 30 kilomètres à l’est de Gatineau
• le côté ouest de l’étage

(b) Capitalize the definite article when it is part of a person’s name:

• Michel Le Cavalier
• Jean de La Vérendrye

See also 4.03 Personal names(d).

(c) Capitalize nouns designating peoples, races and inhabitants of a particular country or region, and capitalize both parts of a compound noun used for this purpose:

• les Autochtones
• un Noir
• les Canadiens
• une Ontarienne
• les Anglo-Saxons
• un Néo-Zélandais

Do not capitalize such words when they are used adjectivally or to refer to a language:

• les citoyens canadiens
• les femmes noires
• le pétrole albertain
• un Canadien français
• une Basque espagnole
• apprendre l’arabe

(d) Capitalize the following nouns when they are part of the official name of a government body, a sector of a government department, an institution, or an international organization: Administration, Agence, Association, Banque, Bureau, Caisse, Chambre, Comité, Commission, Conseil, Cour, Direction générale, Division, Fédération, Office, Organisation, Parlement, Régie, Secrétariat, Sénat, Service, Société, Syndicat, Tribunal, Université, etc.:

• la Banque mondiale
• la Commission de la fonction publique
• la Cour fédérale du Canada
• la Direction générale des finances
• la Division de la formation
• l’Office du crédit agricole
• la Régie des rentes du Québec
• le Tribunal du commerce extérieur

Exception

Do not capitalize the word ministère in a French text, but capitalize it in an English text:

• le ministère de l’Industrie
• le ministère des Affaires indiennes et du Nord canadien

but

• An agreement has been reached with the Government of Quebec—specifically with the Ministère des Ressources naturelles.

Note

If you are including the French name of an institution in an English text, do not use the French definite article (le, la, l’) unless it is part of the official name and must be retained for legal purposes:

• Queen’s University will co-operate with the
• Université Laval on this federally funded project.

(e) Do not capitalize position titles unless they are being used to address a specific person:

• le directeur des Ventes
• le ministre des Finances

but

• Monsieur le Recteur et cher ami
• Monsieur le Directeur

(f) In general, capitalize the first word and any proper noun in the title of a book, periodical, newspaper, report or article:

• Artisanat et création au Québec
• Le nouvel ordre économique international
• Rapport du vérificateur général du Canada

Exceptions

• Le Devoir
• Le Droit

17.05 French Typographical Rules—Numerical expressions

Present the time of day and dates as follows:

• 23 décembre 1995 or 95-12-23
• Heures de travail : de 9 h à 17 h 30
• l’année financière 1995-1996 not 1995-96

Use the comma as the decimal marker in French texts and place the dollar sign after the numerals:

• 2,3 millions de dollars or 2 300 000 $

Note the space between the numerals and the dollar sign.

See also 5.09 Decimal fractions and 5.26 Other considerations.

17.06 French Typographical Rules—Italics

In general, use italics for the same purposes as in English writing: titles, emphasis, etc.

See 6.03 French and foreign words and phrases for the italicization of French words and phrases in English text.

17.07 French Typographical Rules—Punctuation

Adopt the following rules for spacing with punctuation marks.

See 8.14 French and foreign-language quotations for information on the presentation of French quotations and translations.

See 9.06 Translation for the presentation of bibliographic entries.

See 9.45 Personal names for the presentation of French names in indexes.

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