English-French differences in the McGill Guide

I’m writ­ing this blog post for English-pri­ma­ry ed­i­tors who want to get up to speed with the French ci­ta­tion style pre­sent­ed in the McGill Guide.Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 9th ed (Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2018) [McGill Guide]. The McGill Guide says: “Use the rules from the English section when writing in English, even if the source being referred to is in another language. Use the French rules only when writing in French.” Ibid, s E-1.1. Or in French: “Utiliser les règles de la parties français pour écrire en français, et ce même lorsque la source originale est dans une autre langue.” Please leave a com­ment be­low for oth­er differences you’ve en­coun­tered!

There are two oth­er ci­ta­tion man­u­als that Québécois au­thors may be fa­mil­iar with: the Lluelles GuideDidier Lluelles & Josée Ringuette, Guide des références pour la ré­dac­tion ju­ridique, 9th ed (Montréal: Themis, 2017). and the Court of Appeal of Quebec Guide to Legal Citation.“Précis de la référence ju­ridique de la Cour d’ap­pel du Québec” (31 July 2017). These are good places to look if you need help in­ter­pret­ing part of a ci­ta­tion that doesn’t ad­here to the McGill Guide.

Main differences

In this sec­tion, I’ll list the main differences that I en­counter when edit­ing French ar­ti­cles. Most of these are differences from the English ver­sion of the McGill Guide, but I also point out some of the ways that the French McGill differs from com­mon ex­pec­ta­tions of Québécois au­thors be­cause of oth­er style guides.

In French, use “et” not “&” to sep­a­rate the final two au­thors in a list of au­thors.Interesting that “&” is actually an evolution from early “et” ligatures.

Place the foot­note mark­er be­fore the punc­tu­a­tion at the end of a sen­tence (but af­ter any clos­ing quo­ta­tion).

« Le numéro de la note de bas de page se place avant la ponc­tu­a­tion »¹.

When pin­point­ing to a par­tic­u­lar page, English McGill style does not men­tion the word “page” or “p” or “pp.” French McGill style does.

Ibid à la p 3.

Voir ibid aux pp 3–5.

The McGill Guide pre­scribes us­ing a com­ma to sep­a­rate non-con­sec­u­tive pin­points. This is con­sis­tent with English McGill style but is different from what many Québécois au­thors might be used to be­cause the QCCA style guide pre­scribes “et.”See “Précis de la référence ju­ridique de la Cour d’ap­pel du Québec”, supra note 3 at 10.

Sections of statutes and codes are called ar­ti­cles, and pin­points use the ab­bre­vi­a­tion, “art” or “arts.”

Works from Québec will of­ten cite codes list­ed at Section 2.3 of the McGill Guide (for ex­am­ple, the Code civ­il du Québec (CcQ)). These do not take a full ci­ta­tion. Use the un­itali­cized, ab­bre­vi­at­ed form upon first ref­er­ence. The pin­point comes ahead of the ab­bre­vi­a­tion:

Art 523 CcQ.

The McGill Guide does not in­clude Code crim­inel (Ccr) as one of the codes to be short­ened like this. This doesn’t differ from English McGill, but differs from the QCCA style guide.See ibid at 18.

A com­mon pin­point el­e­ment in civ­il codes, not ac­tu­al­ly men­tioned in the McGill Guide, is the al­inéa.This is from the latin for “off the line” and is an alternate name for the paragraph mark (¶). Many sec­tions (ar­ti­cles) in the civ­il codes have mul­ti­ple, un­num­bered para­graphs. These are al­in­éas. They are cit­ed us­ing the ab­bre­vi­a­tion “al”:

Art 523 al 2 CcQ.

The for­mat of a book’s pub­li­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion differs. In English McGill style, the for­mat is:

(Toronto, ON: Thomson Reuters, 2011).

In French McGill style, the for­mat is:

Toronto (ON), Thomson Reuters, 2011.

Editions in French McGill style are su­per-script­ed:

Auteur, titre du livre, 2^e éd, lieu d’édi­tion, mai­son d’édi­tion, an­née d’édi­tion.

The choice of a c or a v in a style of cause de­pends on whether the de­ci­sion was ren­dered in French or English.See McGill Guide, supra note 1, ss E-3.3, F-3.3. French de­ci­sions take c; English de­ci­sions take v. Bilingual de­ci­sions take c when men­tioned in a French work.

French typographical conventions

While these are not ci­ta­tion-style differences, it’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand French ty­po­graph­i­cal con­ven­tions so you don’t an­gli­cize the French text. The Canadian Translation Bureau pub­lish­es a help­ful primer on the ba­sic rules of French ty­pog­ra­phy.See Translation Bureau, “French Typographical Rules”, Public Works and Government Services Canada (2019).

Quotations look like « this ». French uses marks called guillemets. The guillemet takes a space on each side, sep­a­rat­ing these marks from the word it­self. Sentence-end­ing punc­tu­a­tion comes af­ter the clos­ing guillemet. If you use a plain space be­tween the word and the guillemet, Microsoft Word might de­cide to split these el­e­ments across two lines. To avoid that, use a non-break­ing space (ctrl-shift-space, in Microsoft Word).

Em-dash­es and colons also take a space on each side.

Des oblig­a­tions : con­trat et re­spon­s­abil­ité

Droit de la famille — 09358, 2009 QCCA 332.

Capitalization con­ven­tions differ in French.See ibid, s 17.04. This re­sults in cap­i­tal­iza­tions like, “Code crim­inel”, “Charte québe­coise”, and “Charte cana­di­enne.”

If the ti­tle of the book or quo­ta­tion is English, use English ty­po­graph­i­cal con­ven­tions with­in that English text.