When styling a road network where all sections of the network between junctions are separate paths, I style the ends of the lines to rounded to remove any gaps that might appear where the joins are at angles. The only problem is that you then have rounded ends to cul-de-sacs or dead end side roads.
ArcGIS has a tool that allows you to specify the end caps to either square or butt, which removes the rounded ends.
Is there a method of doing this in QGIS?
QGIS lines have a join style and a cap style. If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a feature to have different cap styles depending on whether the cap is at a line end which meets another line or if it's a dead end. That is not implemented yet as far as I know.
If it's acceptable for the entire line for the dead end street to be drawn using a square cap, then you could use QGIS' "data defined symbology" to achieve this.
In your line style properties, click the "data defined properties" button. Check the "cap style" option, then click the expression button. Your expression will need to look something like this:
Case when "dead_end_street" then 'flat' else 'round' end
You'll just need to modify the criteria ( the "dead_end_street" part) to suit whatever attributes you have present in your data to identify these dead end streets.
