Email

Avoid using the @ symbol or sign, also known as the “at sign”, except in email addresses—to separate the user’s name from their domain name—and in some social media applications.

Example: jane_doe@sfu.ca

Twitter

The @ symbol in Twitter is combined with a person or organization’s username and included in tweets to tag the user or send them a message. When the @ is before a username, it is automatically linked to the user's profile page.

Example: @SFUBeedie student @JaneDoe named HSBC Woman Leader of Tomorrow at the @enactus_canada national competition!

Text

The @ symbol was originally used as an abbreviation for "at the rate of" in accounting. But it is increasingly misused as shorthand for “at” in sentences. Use the @ symbol in text only as it was originally intended.

Good: 10 tickets @ $3.50 = $35

Bad: The students will meet @ the gym @ 5 p.m.

Use only for business and other entities that include it as part of the formal name (AT&T, Grand & Toy).

Do not use an ampersand instead of “and” except in graphs, charts and printed figures or text arranged in columns on a page. (In select marketing materials, the ampersand can sometimes be used as a graphic element.)

1) For regular nouns that do not end in s, the general rule is to add an ’s to the singular to denote possession and an apostrophe only after the s to the plural.

Examples:

• the dog’s tail (singular)
• the dogs’ tails (plural)

2) For singular common nouns ending in s or z, add an ’s except when the next word begins with s.

Examples:

• the campus’s bus stop (plural: campuses’ bus stops)
• the campus’ stadium (plural: campuses’ stadiums)

3) For proper nouns ending in an s follow CP Style and add only an apostrophe to the plural form.

Examples:

• Zeballos’ history
• Socrates’ plays
• Martinez’ family is coming
• the Martinezes’ house is small
• Lewis’ house is brown
• the Lewises’ and the Martinezes’ houses are old
• Gulf Islands’ representative
• Gulf Islands’ structures

4) For singular proper names ending in x or z, add an ’s

Examples:

• Comox’s airport
• Agassiz’s population

5) The possessives of pronouns do not get apostrophes.

Use:

• hers, not her’s
• its, not it’s
• theirs, not their’s or theirs’

6) Plurals of letters and numbers:

For nouns formed from single or multiple capital letters and single or multiple numbers, form the plural by adding s alone (the 1960s, IUDs, MBAs). The plural of single lowercase letters is formed with an apostrophe and s (watch your p’s and q’s).

Lists can begin with capitals and end with periods, or not, as long as you are consistent throughout the body of your text. 

Keep the elements in a vertical list parallel. If you don’t have a verb in the introductory phrase, you should have one beginning each of the listed elements.

Example: Vertical lists let you

• show a set of terms, choices or statements clearly
• avert reader fatigue or confusion from a long list in a sentence
• escape repetition by using one opening phrase with several clause items

If your lead-in statement is a whole sentence, use a colon at the end of the sentence to introduce the list. The items can also be listed as sentences.

Example: SFU supports the local economy in at least three major ways:

1. It spends millions of dollars on goods and services in the community.
2. It employs almost 6,000 people.
3. It pays millions in taxes to local governments.

Use brackets (parentheses):

1. to include material that you want to de-emphasize but include nevertheless
2. when other punctuation won’t do the job
3. to enclose a nickname within a name
4. to number or letter a series within a sentence
5. to enclose political or other affiliations
6. to enclose equivalents and translations

Examples:

1. SFU President Andrew Petter was dean of the University of Victoria’s law faculty from 2001-08 (the first year as acting dean).
2. The Moose Jaw (Sask.) Times-Herald
3. William (“Bible Bill”) Aberhart
4. The union pressed for (a) more pay, (b) a shorter work week and (c) better pensions.
5. Senator Nancy Greene Raine (PC—B.C.)
6. “We can expect two more inches (five centimetres) of rain.”

Omit the last comma before “and”—known as the serial (or Oxford) comma—in a list of three or more items.

Example: Students must take history, economics and English.

But use the last comma in a series of items if it prevents confusion.

Example: I dedicate this book to my parents, Alice, and God.

Although they are frequently overused, en and em dashes have numerous applications. Set off em and en dashes without a space before and after the dash.

En dash

An en dash is about the width of an n, slightly longer than a hyphen. It is normally used in place of the word “to” when indicating a date, time or number range. It can also be used to combine open compounds.

Examples:

• 8 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
• February–March, B.C.–Alberta border
• high school–university conference

Em Dash

An em dash is the width of an m. Em dashes can replace commas, semicolons, colons and brackets to indicate additional emphasis, a break or a sudden change of thought.

Examples:

• SFU’s Aboriginal EMBA—Canada’s first—is an example of how SFU is engaging Aboriginal communities.
• She takes three courses—English, math and chemistry.

Use hyphens to join compound modifiers—two or more words serving as a single adjective modifying a noun—to avoid ambiguity.

Examples:

• used-car dealer
• small-business tax
• big-car lover

Do not use hyphens to join compound modifiers when the meaning is clear because of common usage.

Examples:

• acid rain threat
• sales tax increase
• savings bank deposit

Also use hyphens:

1. to indicate joint titles and conflicting or repetitive elements.
2. to avoid doubling a vowel, tripling a consonant or duplicating prefix.
3. with ex-, self-, all-, post- and -elect.

Examples:

1. secretary-treasurer, writer-editor
2. co-operate, re-emerge, anti-intellectual, doll-like
3. ex-husband, self-contained, all-American, post-graduate, president-elect

Do not use a hyphen with adverbs ending in -ly. The -ly alerts readers that the next word is being modified.

Examples:

• brightly coloured room
• eagerly awaited speech

Use italics for:

1) Book titles, newspapers, pamphlets, periodicals, movie titles, record albums

Examples:

• Ernest Hemingway published his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940.
• The prime minister was quoted in The Globe and Mail as being "unapologetic" about the Senate scandal.
• Let It Be was the final studio album released by the Beatles.
  
• Humphrey Bogart and Walter Brennan starred in the 1944 wartime adventure To Have and Have Not along with Lauren Bacall in her first movie role.

2) Foreign words that are not familiar (if it’s in a standard dictionary it doesn’t take italics.)

Examples:

• The boy was exposed to a deadly organism called Naegleria fowleri.
• Recent DNA research suggests The Black Death, a plague that killed an estimated 75 to 200 million people from 1348–50, was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium.

1) In most cases, use double quotation marks except for headlines and quotes within a quote.

Examples:

• Mayor tells reporter to 'get stuffed'
• Vancouver's mayor told the reporter "get stuffed and get lost" in response to a question about his personal life.
• The mayor later apologized.  "I was thinking ‘What right does he have to ask that?' but I should have used more diplomatic language," he said.

2) Position all punctuation marks except colons and semicolons within quotation marks. Exception: when the last word in a sentence appears in quotation marks, the punctuation falls outside.

Example:

• She said the restaurant was “awesome”.

3) Use quotation marks to:

• enclose direct quotations
• indicate words used ironically
• highlight unfamiliar terms on first reference

Examples:

• “It wasn’t the players’ fault,” said the coach, of the “friendly” soccer game that ended with two players being “red carded” in the last half. She added the referee was the one who deserved to be penalized.
  

4) Use quotation marks (not italics) for:

• Songs, other short musical compositions, radio and television shows (or single episodes of continuing series)
• Titles of short poems, articles, individual chapters and short stories
• Title given to a conference (e.g., “The State of Canadian Education”). The complete official name of a conference, such as the annual Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada meeting, is simply capitalized, with no italics or quotation marks. (The words meeting and annual aren’t capitalized because they aren’t part of the title.)
• Symposium and conference lecture and paper titles
• Dissertation and thesis titles

5) Do not use quotation marks to:

• enclose titles of compositions
• enclose sayings and headlines
• format question-and-answer text

Colons

1) The colon is used to mark a break in grammatical construction to explain, expand, enumerate or elaborate. It emphasizes the content relation between the separated elements.

2) The colon is most commonly used after a statement—typically an independent clause—to introduce a series, quotation, summation, example or completion of an introductory thought. Lowercase the first word after a colon in a sentence unless that word is the start of a complete sentence or quotation or is a proper noun.

3) A colon should not separate the main elements of a sentence—such as a verb and its direct object—even if that object is a vertical list.

Examples:

• Only three things in life are certain: death, taxes and lying politicians.
• The lesson was clear: if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
• At the end of the driveway was a sign: Trespassers will be eaten.

4) The colon also separates chapter and verse numbers in religious texts (Genesis 1:1); titles and subtitles in books, articles and movies (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope); numbers in time abbreviations (3:30 a.m) and numeric ratios (1:5).

Semicolons 

Semicolons mark a more important break in the sentence than commas.

They:

• separate two parts of a compound sentence that are related but not connected by conjunctions such as “and”, “but” or “for”
• separate items in a series that are long and complicated or entail internal punctuation.

Example:

• SFU invited presidents from several universities: Peter MacKinnon, University of Saskatchewan; Mamdouh Shoukri, York University; John McKendry, Kwantlen Polytechnic University; and David Turpin, University of Victoria.

To determine if a semicolon is suitable in a compound sentence, try substituting a period in its place and see if each part can stand alone, with a verb and subject:

Example:

• We were running late; the plane was due in 20 minutes.