Unless otherwise indicated, Travel Alberta content adheres to the Canadian Press (CP) style guide. Ideally, content will appear and read like it is from a single source. As the final checkpoint before listings are made public, the ATIS Contact Centre team is tasked with ensuring content meets these standards.


ATIS Listing Description Tips and Best Practices

Below are examples and references for common use cases. This is intended to be living document. Should another common use case be found, please advise the ATIS Contact Centre lead or a Travel Alberta member to update this guide.

Pandemic Specific
COVID-19 is properly written fully capitalized. It is the name of the disease, not the virus and stands for ‘coronavirus disease 2019,’ which is caused by a virus named SARS-CoV-2.

The term ‘coronavirus’ refers to a family of viruses and would not be capitalized unless at the beginning of a sentence.

Third person perspective:
Content should be written in manner that avoids subjective pronouns like “I”, “you”, “we”, to ensure reusability across different marketing channels.

Spacing
A single space follows commas and periods at the end of a sentence­. If these spaces are missing or removed during import, they must be added. The same applies if spaces between words are missing.

Spelling
CP Style is generally to spell words as they are spelled in the Oxford Canadian Dictionary. However, there are exceptions, which are set out in CP Caps and Spelling.

Preferred spelling unless part of a proper name

  • centre, not center
  • kilometre, not kilometer
  • colour, labour, not color, labor


Capitalization
Capitalize all proper names, the names of departments and agencies of national and provincial governments, trade names, names of associations, companies, clubs, religions, languages, races, places, addresses. Otherwise, lowercase is favoured where a reasonable option exists.

Notes

  • The names of seasons should not be capitalized.
  • Specific highways (e.g. Highway 2) is a proper name and should be capitalized.


Numbers
Generally, numbers smaller than 10 (1-9) are spelled out. (e.g. one, two, three, etc.) Numbers 10 and greater use numerals. (10, 11, 188, 1,344) Commas are recommended after the first digit of a four-digit number. The exceptions include years and street numbers.

In technical writing, use numerals rather than spelled-out numbers.

  • The statue is 5 m in diameter.
  • There are five statues in the town square.


Distances and Units of Measure
Using km (not kms) is acceptable when referencing a specific distance (e.g. 15 km)

  • The campsite is 15 km from downtown Banff.
  • 5K, 10K, etc. can be used to reference race formats


For the sake of clarity, when kilometre is used as a modifier, a hyphen is inserted between the numeral and the unit name.

  • On the nine-kilometre trail, cyclists will encounter numerous waterfalls.


Add spaces between number and units. (e.g. 100 W, 50 AMP)

Physical Dimensions

  • 8 ft x 20 ft, not 8x11
  • 160 sq ft, leave space, superscript number not required


Key is consistent implementation of chosen format.

Times
Specific times are shown as numerals. Break minutes from the hour with a semicolon. 2 a.m. (but not 2.00 a.m.), 2:20 a.m.

Duration
Avoid hr or hrs abbreviation. The parade will take two hours. The two-hour class will be the highlight of your trip.

Age
The homestead is 125 years old and the barn is five years old.
The 125-year-old homestead boasts a renovated five-year-old barn.

Temperatures
Numerals are used, unless Celsius or Fahrenheit are not specified. 5 C, -20 C, eight degrees.

Percentages
Percentages are shown in CP Style as two words, “per cent.” Two per cent, 12 per cent, 1.3 per cent.

Months and dates
Months are always written out in full when they are not part of a specific date.

The merry month of May. It was a gloomy November. In September, the kids went back to school. Christmas will come again next December.

In precise dates, however, these months are always abbreviated, as shown: January (Jan.), February (Feb.), August (Aug.), September (Sept.), October (Oct.), November (Nov.) and December (Dec.). March, April, May, June and July are never abbreviated.

Jane was born on Nov. 13, 1951. Her sister Sally was born on May 11, 1957. Disaster would strike New York on Sept. 11.

The days of the week are never abbreviated: The dreadful deed happened on a Saturday. The national holiday will be on Friday, July 1, 2005.

Location – Towns & Provinces
Spell out provinces and states when used in descriptive passages. You may however use B.C., N.W.T. and P.E.I. in descriptive passages. Abbreviate all province and state names when used after the names of a community (Red Deer, Alta.). Remember, CP Style abbreviations are not the same as Canada Post’s.

CP’s abbreviations for provinces are as follows: Alta., B.C., Sask., Man., Ont., Que., N.B., N.S., P.E.I., N.L., and N.W.T. Write out Yukon and Nunavut.

Location – Addresses (applies to descriptions and listing data)
Numerals are usually used in specific addresses. Numbered street names nine and below are spelled out — Fifth Avenue; 123 Fifth Ave. Streets, Avenues and the like are abbreviated in specific addresses (1406 Ryan St.), but not in general addresses (the 1400 block of Ryan Street). In cities like Calgary that break addresses into quadrants, CP style requires that we abbreviate the quadrants with periods.

1352 Norfolk Dr., 10015 85th Ave., 3G St. Albert Rd., 1476 Eighth Ave., in the 1200 block of Whyte Avenue, 2178 Fourth Ave. N.W., the crash took place on Crowfoot Trail in Calgary’s northwest.

Postal Codes
Uppercase letters with a space between three-character sets (e.g. T9N 2H8)

Money
Use numerals if preceded by a symbol representing a currency, write it out if not. Use numerals for fractions under 10. Show U.S., Canadian and other dollars using abbreviations without periods.

$5, five dollars, $2 million, a $7-million house, $6.7 million, 2.5 cents, $500 million US, $2 Cdn, 6 cents.

Abbreviations
CP’s general policy on abbreviations is that geographical abbreviations take periods, others do not.

The RCMP have several offices in the N.W.T. HMCS Calgary ran aground on the south coast of P.E.I.

Titles such as Dr., Capt., Prof., Lieut. are abbreviated, if they come before names, on first reference. They are written out in descriptive passages.

Punctuation

 Quotation Marks
Always place periods and commas inside quotation marks. Do not use quotation marks for emphasis or to indicate the proper name of a business or place. Instead, use italics.

Exclamation Marks
Use of exclamation marks should be limited. If original text contains multiple instances, try to limit use to the most emphatic statement.

Ellipses (…)
An ellipsis is a set of three periods ( ... ) indicating an omission. Each period should have a single space on either side, except when adjacent to a quotation mark, in which case there should be no space.

Ampersand (& Symbol)
Generally, don’t use the ampersand in regular text, headings or titles as a replacement for and.

Exceptions include:

  • Proper nouns, logos and titles.
  • Common abbreviations or shorthand expressions, like B&B or rock & roll
  • Replacing and in a single item within a list (e.g. rock, pop, rhythm & blues and hip hop)
  • + is not a replacement for &


Notes, Exceptions and Common Travel Alberta Use Cases

  • Stay & Play (becoming more common in reference to combining accommodation with recreational activities
  • Junior hockey league or team, not Jr. hockey
  • 5-star rated


References