🔤Names:
- Use full names the first time you mention someone in your writing
Example: Kent Monkman, Nellie McClung - Use last names only after that
Example: Monkman, McClung - Skip formal titles
Don’t use Mr., Ms., Mx., Dr., or any other title in academic writing. - Follow the source for special cases
If someone is known by one name (like Zendaya) or is usually referred to by their title (like Lord Byron), use the name as it appears in your source. - Use character names as they appear in the story
Example: Dr. Jekyll, Ponyboy (not Curtis)
#️⃣Numbers:
- Spell out numbers that can be written as one or two words
Example: one, sixteen, one hundred, ten billion - Use numerals for:
- Numbers that would require more than two words to write out: 2025, 175
- Numbers that come before units of measurement: 20 grams, 5 kilometres
- Numbers followed by abbreviations: 6:30 a.m., 121 rpm
- Numbers used with symbols: 10%, $23.75
- Dates: September 9, 1942
- Addresses: 421 Pine Tree Road
- Decimal fractions: 3.14
- Divisions, like page numbers and chapters: page 19, chapter 7, volume 8
- A range of numbers: 14-29
- For very large numbers you can use a combination of words and numerals
Example: 2 billion, 10 trillion - Be consistent with how you format your dates
Either 9 September 1952 or September 9, 1952, but not both. - Use Roman numerals for:
- People in a series, especially royalty: Rameses I, Rameses II
- Events in a series: World War I, World War II
🔤Titles:
- Use the official title from the title page, not from the cover or another part of the book.
Example: Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets. - Capitalize the title even if the title isn't capitalized on the website or book cover
Example: Facebook, not facebook. - Capitalize all major words in a title, except:
- Articles that don’t come first (a, an, the)
Example: The War of the Worlds - Prepositions that don’t come first (of, to, between)
Example: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, so, or, yet)
Example: Pride and Prejudice
- Articles that don’t come first (a, an, the)
- Separate titles and subtitles with a colon, unless the title ends in a question mark or exclamation point.
Example: Silent Spring: The Book That Changed the World; Wayi Wah! Indigenous Pedagogies - Italicize titles of larger works, like:
- Books, plays, newspapers, magazines
- Websites, online databases
- Films, TV and radio programs
- Visual works of art
Examples: Macbeth, The Globe and Mail, Netflix, Starry Night
- Use quotation marks for shorter works, like:
- Articles, essays, stories, poems
- Chapters in books, pages on websites
- Individual episodes of TV or radio programs
- Unpublished works (like lectures)
Examples: “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “Episode 5: The Reckoning”
- Use the full title the first time you mention it, then shorten it for later references.
Example: Saving Private Ryan → Ryan
