The main things you need to know about the style guide

Our role as a government is to serve the public. This means our writing needs to be clear, inclusive and accessible and have a friendly and open tone. We also want to be consistent. The style guide helps us meet these needs.

Accessible language

• Use conversational language and active, shorter sentences.
• Avoid acronyms and abbreviations.
• Use capitals sparingly.

Government of Yukon

• Our formal name is the Government of Yukon. Our informal name is the Yukon government.
• Note the small “g” for government in our informal name.
• Always use “the” when you refer to the government in a sentence.
• We’re never Yukon Government, Yukon Territorial Government or YTG.

Inclusive language

Follow the guidance for:

• writing inclusively; 
• writing about Indigenous Peoples; and
• putting the person first.

Punctuation

• Only put one space after a period.
• Only use a serial comma if it's vital for clarity.
• Write years as 2022–23, not 2022/23, and dates as "The event is on Friday, July 15, 2022, and everyone's welcome" – you do not always need to include the day but do if it's helpful for people.
• Use double quotation marks in text and single quotation marks in headings.

Sharing the style guide

• Our style guide is public so that everyone can use it, such as contractors working with us and other governments or organizations interested in developing their own style guide. 
• To make the style guide easy to find and refer to we've created a short URL: guide.yukon.ca/style-guide

Spellings

• We use Canadian Oxford Dictionary and Canadian Press spellings rather than American spellings. This means we include the extra vowels, such as "colour" not "color", and extra consonants, so we write "panellist" not "panelist".
• Write licence and practice for the noun and licensed and practise for the verb. For example, I renewed my driver’s licence; the bar is licensed; the doctor’s practice; I’m practising the Safe 6.

The Yukon

• Use “the Yukon” not “Yukon” for internal and public-focused products such as reports, flyers, advertisements, speaking notes, news releases, letters, digital content and briefing notes.
• For formal products such as agreements and legislative documents use “Yukon” not “the Yukon".

Tone of voice

Make sure you use the government's tone of voice which means writing:

• clearly;
• inclusively; and
• consistently

Writing technical and scientific reports

• Follow the guidance in Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. CSE is the Council of Science Editors.
• Also follow the style guide as much as you can.