Recapitulations, with annotations, of Canadian law citation styles

Recapitulations, with annotations, of Canadian law citation styles.

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Secondary materials

Style manuals for various disciplines vary widely because each discipline has a different interest in the elements of the citation. The Modern Language Association (MLA) for example cares little about the date of a book (a novel written in the nineteenth century can be as significant as one written in the twentieth), and so MLA style places the date at the end of the citation. The American Psychology Association (APA), in contrast, cares very much about the date because a psychology book written as little as a decade ago may be woefully out of date. Consequently, the APA places the date at the beginning of the citation. It is unfortunate that here is another entry into the field of citing secondary materials. Perhaps sometime in the future, the Canadian Bar Association will endorse the citation style of another discipline and so reduce the number of ways that a secondary source can be cited. It must be noted, however, that the style recommended by Canadian guide to Uniform Legal Citation is much clearer and more rational than that recommended by the fifteenth edition of the Blue Book, which most jurists in the United States follow.

Go to recapitulations of citation styles for books, journal articles, legal encyclopedias, book reviews, or newspaper articles.

Return to the list of recapitulations of citation styles for secondary materials.

Books

Elements

The citation style for books mercifully requires using only six elements.

(1) Author's name

(2) Title of the book

(3) Volume number, if the volume indicated a discrete work

(4) Edition number

(5) Publication information

a. place of publication

b. name of publisher

c. year of publication

(6) Pinpoint citation--the number of the page where the source text appears

(1) Author: It is unfortunate that the author's given name is not required. The number of books published today has increased to the point where it is not uncommon to find books written by more than one person with the same surname and given name initials. Style manuals, no doubt, abbreviate given names in the interest of space, but concern for clarity should be overriding. Since footnotes are not arranged in alphabetical order, there is not need to put the surname first. You may include honorary titles, however.

Joint authors: You may list up to three, including their initials. If more than three, list only the first author followed by the abbreviations et al. (for et alii, meaning and others). Use an ampersand (&) to separate the names of the second and third authors. When there are more than three authors, list only the first one followed by the abbreviations et al. (for et alii, meaning and others). A comma follows, but does not precede, et al.

Editor of a collection: The editor's name with an indication of editorship appears in the same place as does the author's. Abbreviate editor as ed. and editors as eds. Commas preceded and follow the abbreviation. To list the name of more than one editor, follow the rule more joint authors.

Editor of a book with a title that includes the author's name: If the author's name is part of the title, then the editors name is listed as the first element in the citation.

Editor of a book with a title that does not include the author's name: If the author's name is not part of the book's title, then the editor's name is listed after the title--or the edition number, if one appears--of the book. The editor's name is preceded, not by a comma, but by the phrase ed. by and no comma follows.

Translator: The name of a translator appears in the same location as does the name of an editor of a book that does not include the author's name. The abbreviation trans. precedes the translator's name and no comma follows.

(2) Title: Cite the main title in full, without abbreviations, and display it in italics. If a subtitle helps to identify the book, add a colon to the main title and follow it by the subtitle. Display the first letter of all words except connectives, articles, and prepositions in uppercase. (This is an out-dated style that one only can hope will be replaced with a more modern style encouraging titles to be written as one would write a sentence.)

(3) Volume number: To learn how to display the volume number of books written in French, see pages 42 and 43 of the Canadian guide to Uniform Legal Citation.

Volume is a separate book: Shorten volume to vol. preceded by a comma. The volume number is displayed as a cardinal, arabic numeral, and it appears after the title and before the publication information.

Volumes are contained within a single book: When the volume is a subdivision of a single book, place the volume number after the publication information. Shorten volume to vol., but do not preceded it with a comma. The volume number is displayed as a cardinal, arabic numeral.

(4) Edition: For works with unnumbered revisions, use the abbreviation rev. ed. for works with numbered revisions, use ordinal abbreviations like these: 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th). The edition number follows the title and is preceded by a comma.

(5) Publication information: Include publication information within a set of parentheses.

Place of publication: After the open parenthesis, list the place of publication as it appears on the title page of the book. If more than one location is listed, use only the first. Add the name of a province, state, or country only if needed to identify more clearly the city. A colon follows the place of publication.

Name of the publisher: Cite the name of the publisher as it appears on the title page. Omit the following items: The, Le, La, L, Les, Inc., Ltd., Ltée, Publishing, and Publishers. A comma follows the name of the publisher.

Year of publication: Use all four digits, and be sure to identify the year of publication, not the year of the printing or impression A comma precedes the year and a closed parenthesis follows. Insert a period after the closed parenthesis if the citation does not include a pinpoint reference.

(6) Pinpoint reference: A pinpoint reference for a book is usually a page number or a range of page numbers. It is preceded by the word at and followed by a period. A range of consecutive page numbers is separate by a comma, and at least two digits are retained: e;g., 30-35, not 30-5; 171-78, not 171-8; but 359-64 or 359-364). If making reference to a discussion that appears intermittently after a specific page number, then add the abbreviation ff to the page number: e.g., at 55ff.

If the pinpoint reference is to a chapter or chapters, which is hardly as narrow as a pinpoint, use the abbreviation c.: e.g., c. 3 or c. 3-6. Paragraph is shortened to para. and paragraphs to paras.: e.g., paras. 4, 5 or c.3, para. 9.

A period follows the pinpoint reference.

Example:

P.W. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 2d ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 1985) at 73.

In the example immediately above, the authors name is P.W. Hogg; the title of the book is Constitutional Law of Canada; the book being cited is in its second edition (2d ed.); the place of publication is Toronto; the publisher's name is Carswell; the year of publication is 1985, and page on which appears the source being cited is 73.

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Articles in journals

Elements

The citation style for books mercifully requires using only six elements.

(1) Author's name

(2) Title of the article

(3) Year of publication

(4) Volume number

(5) Name of journal

(6) First page of the article

(7) Pinpoint reference

(1) Author: It is unfortunate that, the author's given name is not required. The number of articles published today has increased to the point where it is not uncommon to find essays written by more than one person with the same surname and given name initials. Style manuals, no doubt, abbreviate given names in the interest of space, but concern for clarity should be overriding. Since footnotes are not arranged in alphabetical order, there is not need to put the surname first. You may include honorary titles, however.

Joint authors: You may list up to three, including their initials. If more than three, then list only the first author followed by the abbreviations et al. (for et alii, meaning and others). Use an ampersand (&) to separate the names of the second and third authors. When there are more than three authors, list only the first one followed by the abbreviations et al. (for et alii, meaning and others). A comma follows, but does not precede, et al.

(2) Title of the article: A rule of thumb is that works that are part of a larger work are enclosed within quotation marks, but works that stand on their own and exist as separate entities are displayed in italics. Since an article is part of a larger work--specifically a journal--the title of an article is enclosed within quotation marks. No comma follows the title because the closed quotation mark is sufficient to indicate the end of the title.

(3) Year of publication: If the journal is identified by volume numbers, then place the year of publication within parentheses. If no volume number is given, then place the year of publication within square brackets.

(4) Volume number: Display the volume number as a cardinal, arabic numeral, and place it between the year of publication and the name of the journal with a space before and after the number. If the page numbers of a volume begin with one for each issue, then put a colon after the volume number and add the issue number with not space either before or after the colon: e.g., 104:23. (In this example 104 is the volume number and 23 is the issue number.)

(5) Name of the journal: You may abbreviate the name of the journal, but do not display the name in italics. A number of style manuals no longer require names of journals to be displayed in italics, a leniency that, while it may not create a great deal of confusion, certainly does make it more difficult to identify the name of the journal. When italics are not used to display the name of a journal, readers have difficulty distinguishing the name of the journal from other information in the citation. Style manuals for law-related disciplines tend to approve of using abbreviations for journal names. A list of the abbreviations for hundreds of periodicals can be found in appendix 6 of the Canadian guide to Uniform Legal Citation.

(7) First page number of the article: Insert a single space after the name of the journal and display the page number as a cardinal, arabic numeral followed by a period if there is no pinpoint reference in the citation.

(8) Pinpoint reference: Since the pinpoint reference for a journal article is always a page number, writers are faced with the task of distinguishing between two kinds of page numbers in a row. To distinguish the page number of the pinpoint reference from the page number at which the article beings, simply place the word at before the pinpoint page number. A period follows the pinpoint reference.

Example:

L.E. Weinrib, "Learning to Live with the Override" (1990) 35 McGill L.J. 541 at 562.

In the example immediately above, the authors name is L.E. Weinrib; the title of the article is Learning to Live with the Override; the year of publication is 1990; the volume number is 35; the name of the journal is McGill L.J.; the page of the journal on which the article begins is 541, and the page at which appears the source being cited is 73.

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Encyclopedic digests

Follow the rules for citing books with a few exceptions. First, leave out the name of the authors. Secondly, pinpoint references may indicate page numbers, paragraph number, or both page and paragraph numbers. You may abbreviate paragraph as either para. or §.

Examples:

Halsbury's Laws of England, vol. 34, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths, 1980) at 60, para. 71.

Halsbury's Laws of England, vol. 34, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths, 1980) at 60, § 71.

American Jurisprudence, vol. 17A, 2d ed. (Rochester: Lawyers Cooperative, 1991) "Contracts", § 97.

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Book reviews

Use the applicable rules for citing a journal article with the following modifications. The reviewer's name comes first followed by a comma. If the review itself is not titled, then second comes the phrase Book Review followed only by a space. If the review does have a title, then the title place within quotation marks comes second. The third element is either the year within parentheses of the journal in which the review appears or the title--with edition if necessary--and author of the book. If the title of the book being reviewed is included, the add the word of to the phrase Book Review. If the name of the book's author is included, the insert the word by before the author's name. The fourth element is the volume number of the journal. Fifth is the name of the journal, and sixth is the page number on which the review begins.

Examples:

S.M. Waddams, Book Review (1982) 32 U.T.L.J. 115.

D.M. Pacioco, book Review of Law of Trusts in Canada, 2d ed. by D.W.M. Waters (1985) 30 McGill L.J. 335.

D. Schachter, "Rule and Purpose in International Society" (1985) 85 Colum. L. Rev. 894..

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Newspaper articles

Signed: Use the applicable rules for citing a journal article with the following modifications. Begin with the authors name. Next, add the name of the news story within quotation marks. Third, give the name of the newspaper in italics, and enclosed in square brackets geographical information that is not part of the paper's name but that may help to identify its location. If the sections of the newspaper are identified by a letter of the alphabet, then add that letter to the page number of the news story. You may also include the column number.

Example:

J. Grey, "Yes to Quebec, No to Its Extreme Demands" The [Montreal] Gazette (17 April 1991) B3.

Unsigned: Begin with the name of the news story.

Example:

"Charter a Poor Safeguard to Citizens, Ex-Justice Says" The [Toronto] Globe and Mail (13 February 1982) 11.

Untitled: Simply leave out the title or include a description of the article being referred to.

Example:

B. Savoie, Letter to the Editor, Le Devoir [Montreal] (13 August 1985) 6.

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