French (Canada) style guide¶
Use this page for Canadian French. The shared French guidance on address and agreement, articles and adjectives, conditions and tense and messages also applies here. The regional choices below take precedence over the France-specific typography. Follow the common registers and localization review.
Terminology and address¶
Use Canadian French terminology for the audience and the actual product. Courriel and courrier électronique are useful terms for electronic mail; choose the established term consistently. Do not insert colloquialisms merely to make prose sound Canadian, or replace every borrowed word without checking its technical meaning.
Use vous in help and instructions. Its agreement depends on the person or people addressed; it is not inherently masculine. Votre connexion est active avoids unnecessary gender marking. Preserve a specific person’s pronouns, and retain role, number and obligation when rephrasing.
Keep the shared French spelling and grammar distinctions: un fichier and le fichier do not identify the same scope, adjectives are not always placed after nouns, and compound nouns do not automatically start with a capital. Use approved localized labels exactly, including their accents.
Punctuation spacing¶
In ordinary Canadian French product prose, put no space before ;, ! or ?. A fine space is an accepted typographic alternative when the publication uses it consistently; do not import the France convention as an automatic replacement. Use a nonbreaking space before : and inside « … ».
| Use | Canadian example |
|---|---|
| Question | Enregistrer les modifications? |
| Exclamation | Merci! |
| Colon | Destination : dossier local |
| Quotation | Le nom « Essai » est déjà utilisé. |
The colon and guillemet examples contain U+00A0 nonbreaking spaces. These spaces are suitable for online documentation; check wrapping and copied text in the actual output. Preserve exact syntax in code, filenames, URLs and other literals.
For a simple list, normally omit the comma before the final et or ou. A comma required by a clause or useful for clarity remains. A semicolon can separate complex items; it is not prohibited. Use a final period for a complete sentence and a consistent form for fragment lists. Use the shared French symbol distinctions for ellipses, dashes and mathematical minus; the regional spacing choices above still govern.
Numbers, dates and currency¶
Use numerals for quantities and a decimal comma in prose: 3 fichiers, 12,5 mm, 25 %. Use a space to group digits when needed. The French abbreviation guidance covers unit symbols, acronym case and ordinals. Preserve Mbit/s for megabits per second; Mo and Mio are not interchangeable quantities.
A named month avoids ambiguity: 13 septembre 2026. Preserve a specified machine-readable date, version or decimal syntax. Let the application format dynamic values for the target locale rather than editing digits or separators inside a translated string.
Put a dollar symbol after the amount. Specify the currency when dollars could refer to different countries: 12,50 $ CA identifies Canadian dollars in prose. Preserve CAD when a data field or financial system requires that code. Localizing a price display does not authorize changing the amount, currency or tax conditions. See names and formats.
Interfaces and messages¶
Apply the French message distinctions: an operation in progress, a failed attempt and a present limitation need different wording. Preserve possible access and strict quantity boundaries such as plus que doubler. A warmer tone does not justify a completion claim or a promised result.
Follow the actual platform and keyboard. Canadian French layouts and their printed key names need not match a France keyboard. Use a recognizable description such as flèche gauche when useful; quote a displayed label or verified combination exactly. Check access-key collisions and shortcuts in the running product. The shared keyboard guidance defines the documentation format.
Speech¶
Use natural Canadian French pronunciation and the approved pronunciation of product names. Do not imitate an accent or impose a phonetic spelling catalog from an unrelated product. Read numbers in French, but keep a version’s separators recognizable as version separators.
If listeners need to reproduce a URL or identifier, speak all necessary parts in order. A decision to omit http or a dot depends on the task, not the locale alone. Follow the shared audiovisual guidance for captions, timing and information carried only by the image.