A French email can be perfectly translated and still look wrong to someone in Montreal. The words are right, but the price says $29.99, the event starts at 7:30 PM, and there's a space before every exclamation mark because the template was copied from a French campaign. None of it is a translation error. It's formatting, and it's the part translators often don't control, because half of it comes from the template, the product feed or the ESP.
This guide is the checklist I'd hand a builder and a translator before the first Quebec send. The rules come from the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), whose Banque de dépannage linguistique is the reference most Quebec editors use. Where Quebec practice differs from France's, I've said so, because that's where most mistakes come from.
For what the law requires, rather than how to write it, see the Quebec French email guide.
Prices
The dollar sign goes after the number, with a space, and the decimal separator is a comma.
- English: $29.99
- Quebec French: 29,99 $
- Large amounts are grouped with spaces, never commas: 12 000 $. A four-digit amount can go either way (1 299,99 $ or 1299,99 $); pick one and stick to it
- Whole amounts are normally written without decimals: 25 $, 500 $
- If the currency could be unclear (a cross-border offer, or prices in US dollars), add the country: 25 $ CA, 25 $ US
The OQLF's page on writing sums of money covers this, and its spacing table is clear that the space before $ is a non-breaking one. More on why that matters in email below.
The email trap: dynamic prices. Hand-typed prices are easy to get right. The ones that go wrong come from product feeds, abandoned basket blocks and price merge tags, which usually output the store's English format. If your French email pulls prices from a feed, check how they render before you check anything else. Most ESPs can format numbers with a locale filter in their templating language; if yours can't, have the French feed send a pre-formatted price.
Percentages
A space before the % sign, non-breaking: 20 %, jusqu'à 40 %. It looks odd to English eyes, which is exactly why it gets "corrected" back to 20% in review. Tell your English-speaking approvers it's meant to be there.
Dates
- Days and months take a lower-case initial: le jeudi 24 juin 2027, not Jeudi 24 Juin.
- The order is day name, day, month, year, with no comma between the day name and the date.
- The first of the month is written 1er: le 1er juillet.
- In running text, dates take le. In a heading, a programme or a list of events, you can drop it and capitalise the first word: Jeudi 24 juin.
So "Sale ends Sunday, November 1" becomes L'offre se termine le dimanche 1er novembre. The OQLF's guidance is on its page about dates and times in everyday texts.
Times
Quebec French uses the 24-hour clock, with an h, and spaces either side of it.
- 19 h 30, not 7:30 PM, 19h30 or 19:30
- 9 h, not 9 h 00
- 8 h 05: minutes under ten keep their zero
- Ranges: de 9 h à 17 h
- Time zones: HNE (heure normale de l'Est) and HAE (heure avancée de l'Est) rather than EST and EDT
The colon form (19:30) is reserved for timetables and tables. In an email body, write 19 h 30.
The email trap: countdown timers and event blocks are usually images or third-party widgets with their own date and time formats. Check them separately, or set their locale to French (Canada) if the tool allows it.
Punctuation and spacing
This is where Quebec and France part company, and where copying a campaign from a French sister brand catches people out.
- Colon: a non-breaking space before and a normal space after: Nouveau : la collection d'automne
- Semicolon, exclamation mark and question mark: no space before. The OQLF opts for no space before these, or a thin space if your software has one. France uses a space before them, so C'est parti ! in a French campaign becomes C'est parti! for Quebec.
- Quotation marks: French guillemets with non-breaking spaces inside: « Vendredi fou »
- Apostrophe: the curly one (’) in body copy if your template supports it. Either way, be consistent: a mix of straight and curly apostrophes is a sign that text was pasted from two places.
Capitals and accents
- Capitals keep their accents in Quebec usage: À, É, ÉTÉ, not A or ETE. That applies to all-caps headings and buttons too. The OQLF covers it on its page about accents on capitals. Watch for CSS
text-transform: uppercase: it keeps accents, but a designer who types the heading in capitals by hand often drops them. - Don't use English title case. "Shop The New Fall Collection" becomes Magasinez la nouvelle collection d'automne, with a capital only on the first word and on proper nouns. Title Case in French reads as a direct translation.
Words that mark copy as written for Quebec
A few words that a France-trained translator, or a machine, often gets wrong for a Quebec audience:
- courriel, not e-mail or mail
- infolettre is common for a newsletter in Quebec
- magasiner (to shop) and magasinage
- Vendredi fou for Black Friday, which the OQLF recommends over the English term
- se désabonner for unsubscribe, and gérer vos préférences for manage preferences
The safest fix isn't a word list, though. It's a translator who writes Quebec French for a living, briefed that the email is for Quebec.
Email-specific traps
Non-breaking spaces get lost
All of the rules above that involve a space before a sign (29,99 $, 20 %, 19 h 30, « », the colon) need a non-breaking space, or the email will break a line between the number and its symbol on a phone. It's one of the most common formatting faults in French email: 29,99 at the end of one line and $ alone at the start of the next.
In HTML, that's or the character U+00A0. The problem is that some drag-and-drop editors strip when you paste, and some translators type ordinary spaces. Check the finished email on a narrow phone screen, and search the HTML for the patterns that should be non-breaking.
Subject lines and preheaders
Subject lines and preheaders are plain text, so the formatting rules still apply but you can't fix a line break with code. Keep the price and its $ together by using a non-breaking character in the subject field, and check how it previews on a phone. French also tends to run longer than English, so a subject line that just fits in English often gets cut off in French. Write the French to its own length rather than squeezing a translation into the English one's space.
Encoding
If your accented characters come out as é or �, the email or the subject line isn't being sent as UTF-8. It's rare in modern ESPs, but still common in older templates, imported HTML and CSV uploads for merge fields. Send yourself a test to a real inbox, not just the ESP's preview, and read the subject line on a phone.
Images with text in them
Banner images with English text baked in are the single most common way an otherwise French email ends up partly English. Either make a French version of every image that contains words, or keep words out of images and put them in live text.
A pre-send check for French emails
- Prices: 29,99 $, no commas in thousands, dynamic prices checked
- Percentages: 20 % with a non-breaking space
- Dates: lower-case days and months, 1er, no comma after the day name
- Times: 19 h 30, de 9 h à 17 h
- No space before ; ! ?, a non-breaking space before :
- Guillemets « » with spaces inside
- Capitals keep their accents; no English title case
- No line breaks between a number and its symbol on a phone
- Subject line and preheader in French and not cut off
- No English left in images, buttons, alt text or the footer
- Accents display correctly in the subject line in a real inbox
Frequently asked questions
How do you write prices in Quebec French?
With the dollar sign after the number and a comma for decimals: 29,99 $. Large amounts are grouped with spaces rather than commas (12 000 $), and the space before the $ should be non-breaking.
Do you put a space before an exclamation mark in Quebec French?
No. The OQLF recommends no space before the semicolon, exclamation mark and question mark, or a thin space where software allows it. France usually puts a space there, which is why French copy reused from France often looks wrong in Quebec. A colon still takes a space before it.
How do you write the time in Quebec French?
Use the 24-hour clock with an h and spaces: 19 h 30, 9 h, de 9 h à 17 h. Don't use AM and PM, and keep the colon form for timetables.
Do French capital letters keep their accents?
Yes. In Quebec usage capitals keep their accents, including in all-caps headings and buttons: ÉTÉ, not ETE.
Why does my French price break across two lines on mobile?
Because the space between the number and the $ is an ordinary space. Use a non-breaking space ( in HTML) so the number and the symbol always stay together.
