The main things you need to know about the style guide

Date adopted
Last update: 
November 20, 2025

Our role as a government is to serve the public, so our writing needs to be clear, accessible and inclusive and have a friendly and open tone. We’ve publicly committed to using plain, inclusive and consistent language in the Brand standards (page 11). We also want to all write to the same professional standard and make it easy for decision makers to understand what we’ve written. Everyone following the same writing and design style is more efficient and makes better use of our time as public servants. We don’t have to keep making decisions about how to write or format things. These are all reasons we have a style guide.

Accessible language

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:

Indigenous Peoples

  • The term First Nations can refer to governments, groups or individuals. Make sure it’s clear which meaning you intend.
  • Avoid possessive language that implies ownership as this can appear colonial. For example, write “Yukon First Nations” not “The Yukon’s First Nations”.
  • Pay attention to capitalization. Many terms are proper nouns or legal terms. Capitalization also indicates respect. For example, Traditional Territory, Settlement Land, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Elder, Citizen, Self-Government Agreement
  • Write “First Nations governments” with “Nations” as a plural to indicate there are many separate nations in the Yukon and across Canada.
  • Follow the guidance at Indigenous Peoples.

Punctuation and other reminders

  • Use just one space after a period, not two.
  • Write headings in sentence case (only the first word needs a capital letter).
  • Write year ranges as 2017–18 not 2017/18 (use dashes not hyphens).
  • Use en dashes – like this – not hyphens which are shorter (-) or em dashes which are longer (—).
  • Write “the Act” and “the Regulation” when you’re referring to specific legislation.
  • Capitalize proper names of units, branches, divisions and departments (such as Policy Unit, Land Management Branch, Motor Vehicles Division, the Department of Justice) then just write “the branch” or “the department” lowercase. This goes for programs too.
  • Our date style is Tuesday, June 29, 2021, not Tuesday June 29th 2019 or other variations (note all the commas).
  • There’s a style guide list of common government words we can add to any time.
  • There’s also a handy list of words to avoid misusing such as the following.
    • Write “the committee comprises five members” not “the committee comprised of five members”.
    • Use “fewer” for things you can count one by one and “less” for things you can’t count individually. (For example, “There were fewer people there than we expected” and “It takes less time than you think”.)

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, not American spellings. 
  • Write counsellor, traveller, panellist, colour, neighbour, labour, behaviour, centre.
  • 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 is open”, “I’m practising giving presentations”.
  • Follow the preference of the jurisdiction or organization you’re writing about, such as including periods in B.C. and U.S. and writing and “the City” not “the city” for the City of Whitehorse.

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

Visual identity

  • Always use the design fonts for public communications materials – the design fonts are Monserrat, Nunito Sans and Aleo. 
  • Follow the Brand standards for all external products – use the four elements of the fonts, colours, logo and a supporting graphic

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.
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