Addresses (physical and web)

Physical addresses

Postal addressing

Canadian postal addresses — and it is assumed that any address that includes a postal code is to be treated as such — are formatted according to Canada Post’s guidelines:

  1. name, title, company
  2. street number & name
  3. city, 2-letter provincial code, double-space, postal code (without commas)

Addresses in copy

When set in copy, province & territory names will be abbreviated colloquially, if at all, (e.g. Alta. for Alberta).

Non-Canadian addresses will be formatted in accordance with the official standards of that country’s postal service.

Web addresses (URLs/URIs)

  • When displaying web addresses, omit https://www. and any trailing / or filenames (such as index.aspx, default.php, etc.) — the shorter something is, without compromising function or clarity, the better.
  • When creating functional hyperlinks — say, in your website’s content management system — you must never omit the http:// or https://, otherwise your links will not work.
  • Only in rare circumstances should web addresses be used as links’ visible text; the link text should always be meaningful to the visitor, and convey exactly what he can expect to have happen when the link is followed. Surprises are unwelcome.
  • https://tantramarinteractive.com/index.php < worst-case scenario
  • Tantramar Interactive Inc. < much better, & goes to the same place
  • Read “Your site can use “Click here” links or it can be easy to use — pick one” for more on how important link-text is to your site’s ease-of-use
  • Test any abbreviated addresses you use before publishing; not all sites are configured to work without www., for example.
  • Make sure spell-check or autocorrect haven’t mangled any addresses prior to publishing.
  • The domain portion of a web address is never case-sensitive (though in some cases the mixed-cased TantramarInteractive.com can be more readable than the lower-case tantramarinteractive.com), but directory- & file-names can be, depending on the server platform & how it’s configured.