Upping The Anti – Style Guide[1]

Updated: March 21, 2007

Upping The Anti uses the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, with the exceptions stated below.

WORDS WE OFTEN USE:

  • neoliberal not neo-liberal
  • September 11 not 9/11 or 9-11
  • percent not per cent or %
  • internet is not capitalized
  • email does not contain a hyphen
  • hip hop is not hyphenated
  • child care is two words
  • health care is two words

ACRONYMS

No periods in acronyms (US, WTO, NAFTA)

On first reference, write out the full name, then put the acronym in parentheses and from then on use only the acronym. Ex: “The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) was against the move.... Later, OPSEU representatives ate hamburgers.”

ANTI

Words containing the prefix “anti” should be hyphenated. Ex: “anti-capitalist, anti-oppression, anti-imperialist”

CANADIAN AND AMERICAN SPELLING
  • Canadian spelling in “ou” instances: labour not labor
  • Canadian spelling in “re” instances: centre not center
  • American spelling in “z” instances: organize not organise
  • American spelling in “m” instances: program not programme
CAPITALIZATION

Capitalize Black, Indigenous, Native, etc. only in instances that reference groups or contexts in which this is the political practice.

Formal titles, whether government, corporate or whatever, are only uppercase if preceding the name, unless they are merely descriptive (i.e. Hydro One president John Doe). Ex: “‘The prime minister’s colon is missing,’ said Premier Dalton McGuinty.”

Regular job titles are lowercase. Ex: OCAP organizer John Clarke.

COLONS

No caps after colons anywhere, unless the word requires a capital to begin with.

Colons are one possible alternative to the single em-dash.

See also EM-DASHES.

COMMAS

Upping The Anti uses serial commas. In sentences containing lists, a comma should precede the final item in the list. Ex: “lions, tigers, and bears – oh my!”

DATES AND DECADES

For decades: no spaces or apostrophes between number and s: 1980s not 1980’s

Early ’90s / late ’90s / mid-’90s but use a hyphen for all when used as an adjective.

  • the ’70s
  • a late-’80s release

Months should be written out in full: January 26, 1997, not January 26th.

ELLIPSES

In citations, ellipses replace the period at the end of a sentence when the next portion of the citation skips what follows immediately after the first sentence. (e.g. “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism… Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power?”)

In citations where the extracted text falls before a period, the ellipses comes after a single space (e.g. “Freeman and slave … guild-master and journeyman … stood in constant opposition to one another.”

EM-DASHES

There should be spaces around em-dashes. Think of em-dashes as interjections (as opposed to parenthetical asides). And (almost) never use just one; if you’re tempted, try a period or a comma or a semi-colon instead.

EXCLAMATION MARKS

Avoid.

FOREIGN WORDS AND ACCENTS
Foreign words denoting concepts (e.g. zeitgeist) and foreign words for which there is an identical English word with a different meaning (e.g. introduction) should be italicized. Foreign language proper names (e.g. Hezbollah) should not be italicized. All foreign words including accents should appear with their accents (e.g. Québec) All foreign words deriving from languages that do not use the Roman alphabet should be transposed into the roman alphabet.

GENDER AND WORD CHOICE

Avoid using [sic] when encountering gender-exclusive language in citations. Repeating exclusive or oppressive language should be avoided in the author’s own composition.

Alternative spellings meant to denote people in a political manner (for example, womyn, wimmin, afrikan)should only be used in reference to instances in which they have been presented as such.

Gender pronouns should be consistent with the preference of the subject.

ITALICS

Titular: Works are italicized (books, plays, movies, albums, paintings, sculptures).

Emphatic: You should be able to let the syntax of your sentences emphasize the words you want highlighted. No italics except in extreme circumstances.

MEASUREMENT

Use metric whenever possible, except when the usual unit of measurement is imperial – i.e., a person’s weight is measured in pounds, height is measured in feet and inches.

  • It was 8 cm long.
  • It was a 200-km-long highway.
  • It was shot on 8 mm film.
  • She stood 5'8''. (straight quotes, not smart quotes)
MONEY
  • She earns $9 million a year.
  • He bought an $8-million sugar-cube-making system.
  • $8 billion (US)
NAMES

On first mention of a proper name, use the full name. Subsequently, use surname only.

NUMBERS

Spell out one through nine, use numerals for 10 and up, unless at the beginning of a sentence:

  • Twenty-five years ago, things were different.
  • I saw a man walking 16 dogs and six were wearing sweaters; two of the dogs appeared to be dead.

Use appropriate commas in any number larger than 999. Ex: 2,887 or 2, 333, 837.

For cardinal numbers, follow the same rules as for numbers in general: First; Third; Ninth; 10th; 100th. Upping The Anti does not use superscript.

PLACE NAMES

Abbreviations for place names do not take periods (US, UK)

In any use of “Town, Province/State,” the province/state should be spelled out and followed by a comma. Note that province is unnecessary for capitals.

  • This teen girl from Edmonton, Alberta, is totally rad.
  • But the girl from Ottawa is even cooler.
PUNCTUATION

Periods and commas belong inside quotations (“like this.”)

Colons, semi-colons and dashes belong outside the quotations.

REFERENCES AND CITATIONS

First reference to a text receives and endnote with bibliographic information. All subsequent references to the same text receive parenthetic notation of cited page(s) within the body of the text immediately following the citation.

Endnotes are placed after punctuation, outside of quotes.

TIME

  • 5-10pm; 9am to 1pm; 11am to 7am
  • 1 o’clock, 2pm, 3am but noon, midnight
TITLES OF WORKS

Italicize the names of books, films, newspapers, magazines, journals, plays, long poems, radio and television programs, works of art.

Quotation marks go around the titles of articles, essays, short poems, short stories, songs, chapters of books.

THAT, WHICH

Which is for a nonrestrictive clause; that is for a restrictive clause. Generally that clauses don’t need commas; which do. So: “the yo-yo that’s broken is in the drawer” means I have other yo-yos. “The yo-yo, which is broken, is on the shelf” means I have no others (and the one I do have is broken, damn it!

VERB FORM

Corporations, institutions and organizations take the singular verb form:

Ex: OCAP is hosting a fundraiser.

[1] Borrowed heavily from Eye Weekly, Public, and Shameless magazine.