French Language Guides
Introduction
The French guides cover a wide range of topics. They can help you write better French, whether you’re a francophone, an anglophone or bilingual. You may need to consult the guides on a very specific question—What is the correct way of writing an address in French? What are the rules for spaces before and after a colon?—or simply because you want to learn more about a particular aspect of the language—What are the principal recommendations of the last spelling reform? What languages contributed the most to the French lexicon? The guides are replete with examples, tips and advice that will give you a better understanding of the French language and help you overcome many of its difficulties.
Antidote’s French Module contains 923944 articles on the difficulties of writing French correctly and how to overcome them. The articles are divided among eleventwelve guides.
Orthographe (Spelling)
Articles on plural forms, homophones, capitalization, diacritics, hyphens, the spelling reform, etc.
Lexique (Lexicon)
Articles on French inflectional and derivational morphology, Anglicisms, various types of lexical and semantic confusions, Antidote’s dictionaries, etc.
Grammaire (Grammar)
Articles on the basic notions of French grammar, the various lexical categories, syntactic functions, rules of agreement, etc.
Syntaxe (Syntax)
Articles on the different types of sentences, i.e. declaratives, questions, negatives, coordinated sentences, cleft sentences, etc.
Ponctuation (Punctuation)
Articles on the use of all the various punctuation marks, French quotation marks, hyphens, different types of parentheses, etc.
Style
Articles on French stylistic conventions, registers, figures of speech, transitions, etc.
Rédaction (Business Writing)
Articles on the correct way to write business letters in French, emails, abbreviations, dates, addresses, sums of money, the feminization of nouns and titles, etc.
Typographie (Typography)
Articles on the correct use of breaking and non-breaking spaces in French, italics, French quotation marks and other paired symbols, case in enumerations, special characters, etc.
Phonétique (Phonetics)
Articles that discuss the relationship between French spelling and pronunciation, the two standards of phonetic transcription, elision, liaison, Parisian pronunciation compared to Montréal pronunciation, etc.
Historique (History)
Articles on the evolution of French vocabulary, the French spelling system, French grammar, the many languages from which French has borrowed, etc.
Points de langue (Language Matters)
The Points de langue guide contains language-related articles published by Druide’s linguists on our website. They contain answers to the most frequent or complex questions that arise and may further clarify subjects dealt with in the other guides.
Français et anglais (English and French)
This guide describes the key differences (lexical, grammatical, etc.) between the English and French languages. It contains articles aimed at writers for whom French or English is a second language.
From one language to the other
The English and French buttons located in the upper left corner of the table of contents let you move quickly between guide articles in each language dealing with equivalent subjects. It is also possible to go from one language to the other via the results displayed in the instant search menu. The link n additional English articles, at the bottom of the search results list, indicates the number of articles corresponding to the current search in the other language. Clicking the link displays the corresponding results in the search menu.
When the language of the search term is unambiguous, Antidote takes you from one language guide to the other intelligently. For example, if you search for “majuscule” in the English guides, Antidote will understand that this is a French term and will automatically display the results it finds in the French guides.
Favourites and personalized article lists
Adding and removing favourites and personalized article lists is done the same way in the French guides as in the English (see the Guides chapter). Click the chevron next to the heart icon to open the favourites menu, then click Edit to open the favourites window. This window displays English and French lists separately and offers several options for managing them. The favourites menu also includes the English and French buttons, which are used to alternate between the English and French lists.