People and places

In general, we follow the guidelines laid out in the Canadian Press Stylebook for writing about people and places. Here are some handy highlights.

Names and titles

Rule number-one: Spell people's names right! We'll dock you 50% if you don't.

Use full names on first reference. On all subsequent mentions, refer to them by their first name. Don't use courtesy titles like Mr. or Mrs. no matter how your parents raised you.

Capitalize job titles, but only in email signatures or if it precedes someone's name.

• Luke Seeley, Creative Director

• Creative Director Luke Seeley

• Luke Seeley is the creative director at Pixel Union.

Capitalize the names of departments and teams (but not the word "team" or "department").

• Agency team

• Support department

Pronouns

If your subject’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, use they, them, and their as a singular pronoun. Use he/him/his and she/her/her pronouns as appropriate. Don’t use one as a pronoun.

Places

Spell out all city, state, province, country, etc. names. Don't abbreviate or use nicknames, unless you're using it in a subsequent reference and it's widely recognized.

• The Great White North

• T-Dot

• The Big Apple

Abbreviate province and state names when used after the name of a city. We prefer the two-letter postal abbreviations to those used by CP ("Alta" reminds us more of Atlanta, Georgia than it does Alberta, Canada.)

• Victoria, BC

• Boulder, CO

• New York, NY

When referencing cities outside North America, it's a good idea to include the country, unless you're talking about a well-known capital (think London, Paris, Tokyo).

• Würzburg, Germany

• Rotorua, New Zealand

Assume that users will know what US and UK stand for. UAE, however, should be spelled out on first reference.

Don't include periods in place-name acronyms.

Directions

North, south, east, and west take the lowercase form when referring to simple directions, as do northern, southern, eastern, and western.

• They drove east towards New England.

• The power outage affected all of southwestern Ontario.

Capitalize these words when they refer to specific geographic locations:

• The Far East

• West Texas

• Central Canada

When talking about coasts, use the lowercase form when referring to actual shorelines, but the uppercase form when referring to geographical areas.

• the east coast of Florida

• here on the West Coast