The Canadian Style
http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca
Common menu bar links
Institutional Links
-
Translation Bureau
Language Portal of Canada
-
TERMIUM Plus®
-
- Favourite Articles
- HyperGrammar2
- Peck's English Pointers
- The Canadian Style
- Word Tailoring
- Writing Tips
- Chroniques de langue
- Clefs du français pratique
- ConjugArt
- Dictionnaire des cooccurrences
- Juridictionnaire
- Le Bellerive
- Le guide du rédacteur
- Le Rouleau des prépositions
- Les mots du droit
- Lexique analogique
- Caleidoscopio del español
-
Chapters
- + Abbreviations
- + Hyphenation: Compounding and Word Division
- + Spelling
- + Capitalization
- + Numerical Expressions
- + Italics
- + Punctuation
- + Quotations and Quotation Marks
- + Reference Matter
- + Letters and Memorandums
- + Reports and Minutes
- + Usage
- + Plain Language
- + Elimination of Stereotyping in Written Communications
- + Geographical Names
- + Revision and Proofreading
- - Close French Typographical Rules
- French Typographical Rules—Introduction
- French Typographical Rules—Acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations
- French Typographical Rules—Word division
- French Typographical Rules—Capitalization
- French Typographical Rules—Numerical expressions
- French Typographical Rules—Italics
- French Typographical Rules—Punctuation
Proactive Disclosure
Important notice
Good news! We have updated our writing tools. The Canadian Style and Writing Tips have been combined to create a new tool called Writing Tips Plus.
Don’t forget to update your bookmarks. The Canadian Style will be removed from the Language Portal of Canada in early 2021.
Search and Functionalities Area
17.07 French Typographical Rules—Punctuation
Adopt the following rules for spacing with punctuation marks.
| Mark | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Asterisk before word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | No space |
| Asterisk after word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Colon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | 1 space |
| Comma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Decimal comma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | No space |
| Dash (em) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | 1 space |
| Ellipsis points at beginning of sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Ellipsis points in middle or at end of sentence . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Exclamation mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Oblique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | No space |
| Parenthesis/bracket (opening) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | No space |
| Parenthesis/bracket (closing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Question mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
| Quotation mark (opening) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | 1 space |
| Quotation mark (closing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 space | 1 space |
| Semicolon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | No space | 1 space |
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.
© Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2021
TERMIUM Plus®, the Government of Canada's terminology and linguistic data bank
Writing tools – The Canadian Style
A product of the Translation Bureau
