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Writing in French

Last updated on November 28, 2025

Multi-language content must be professionally translated. Find out more about Creating non-English content in CMS Lite.

French formatting is different from English. This guide covers the formatting and grammar rules that are specific to French. For all other formatting guidance, use the Web Style Guide.

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Capitalization

In French, several words that are capitalized in English remain lowercase:

  • Days of the week
  • Months
  • Religions and their adjectives
  • Languages and nationalities

Curved apostrophe

French uses the typographic (curved) apostrophe (’), instead of the straight apostrophe ('). 

Most text processors correct this automatically. If making changes in CMS Lite, use the special character tool, or ALT+0146 on the numeric keypad.

Italics

Use italics to set apart some words, including the names of legislation and titles of written documents.

Lists

In French, list punctuation is mandatory, except if the list item is only one or two words and not part of a sentence.

  • A list item may end with a comma, a semicolon or a period. The first word may or may not be capitalized, depending on list structure and content
  • Do not add et (and) or ou (or) before the final list item

Numbers

French uses a space as the thousands’ separator and a comma as the decimal separator. For example: 

  • English: 1,234.56
  • French: 1 234,56

Currency

The currency sign is placed after the number, with a space in front of it.

  • English: $16.75 
  • French: 16,75 $

Percentages

Include a space between the number and the percentage symbol.

  • English: 6%
  • French: 6 %

Date and time

Date appears in the following format without any commas: date month year

Time appears in the 24-hour format, the colon is replaced by the letter 'h' for 'hour'. Zeros are not included when the time is on the hour.

  • English: From 9:00 am to 5:30 pm
  • French: De 9 h à 17 h 30

Ordinal numbers

1er and 1re are used only for 'first' and depend on noun gender.

  • 1er → masculine (1er janvier)
  • 1re → feminine (1re année)

For all other ordinal numbers, add 'e' in superscript (2e, 3e, 4e, etc.), except when writing dates. For dates, use ordinal numbers only for the first day of the month (1er). All other dates use cardinal numbers (2, 3, 4, etc.).

Punctuation and spacing

French uses guillemets (« ») instead of quotation marks (" "). The guillemets are separated from the quoted text by a non-breaking space.

English quotation marks (" ") are sometimes used as second-level quotation marks within French guillemets.

Non-breaking space

A non-breaking space must always appear before a colon (:) or guillemets (« »). For example: 

  • English: "Services include:"
  • French: «  Parmi les services :  »

Note to CMS Lite users: CMS Lite does not currently support non-breaking spaces. Before publishing, check in QA to make sure the colon does not get separated from the word ahead of it and the guillemets do not get separated from the quoted text.

Thin space

CMS Lite does not currently support thin spaces. In other applications (InDesign, graphics, etc.) where a thin space is available, a thin space appears before:

  • Semicolons (;)
  • Question marks (?)
  • Exclamation points (!)

Superscript

Some abbreviations in French require part of the word to be set in superscript. For example:

  • English: Dr. Bonnie Henry
  • French: Dre Bonnie Henry

Before publishing, check in QA to make sure the superscript does not get separated from the word that comes after it.