The Canadian Style
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- - Close Punctuation
- Introduction to Punctuation
- Spacing
- The Period, Main purpose
- Imperatives, exclamations and indirect questions
- Ellipsis points
- Leaders
- Other uses
- Periods properly omitted
- The Question Mark, Main purpose
- Requests, indirect questions and other uses
- The Exclamation Mark, Main purpose
- The Exclamation Mark, Miscellaneous
- The Comma, General
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- The Comma, Co-ordinate elements
- Clarity and emphasis
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- Quotations, etc.
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- The Semicolon, Between independent clauses
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- Misuse and overuse
- The Colon, Between independent clauses
- Annunciatory function
- The Colon, Miscellaneous
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- Use
- Multiples
- The Em Dash, General
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- The En Dash, Numerals
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7.64 Plurals
Certain plurals are sometimes written with ’s:
- abbreviations whose appearance would otherwise be ambiguous or confusing (see 1.04 Plurals) and the plurals of lower-case letters, symbols and numerals:
- c.o.d.’s
- x’s
- +’s and -’s
- POW’s
- a’s and w’s
- 6’s
Another solution is to italicize the letter, symbol or numeral in question (see 6.11 Mathematical, statistical and scientific material).
- cited words:
an overabundance of is’s and which’s
It is not necessary to use the apostrophe in set expressions such as "the dos and don’ts," "no ifs, ands or buts," "the whys and wherefores."
- words not conveniently pluralized:
- all the Toms, Dicks, Harrys and Louis’s
- all the Lao’s in Laos
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