Home › Guides

How to write Bluebook citations for a US law journal: six habits editors look for

If you trained on OSCOLA, submitting to a US law review means switching to the Bluebook. Here is what I see UK-trained writers miss, illustrated with the Yale Law Journal's own style guide.

1. Read the journal's style guide first

The Bluebook is only the base layer. Journals add house rules that override it. Yale, for example, follows the Bluebook for citations, the Chicago Manual of Style for everything else, and its own guide above both.

2. Pinpoint almost everything

Yale has a "strong presumption" in favour of pincites. The only exceptions are sources introduced with see generally and sources cited simply for their existence.

3. Make parentheticals do work

Explanatory parentheticals start with a present participle ("holding", "arguing") and read like an ordinary sentence, articles included. They show the editor why the source supports you.

4. Id. is alive and well

Unlike OSCOLA, which has just dropped ibid, the Bluebook still uses id. for the immediately preceding source, and supra for earlier ones. Don't mix the two systems.

5. Block quotes start at fifty words

Quotations of fifty words or more go in a block. Shorter quotations stay in the text.

6. Archive your links

US journals expect online sources to carry a perma.cc link in square brackets after the URL, so the source survives if the page changes.

I help you apply the Bluebook, and the house style of the journal you are targeting, to your own article. Get in touch.

Source: The Yale Law Journal, Volume 133 Style Guide (following The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 21st edition). Always check the edition your target journal uses.

I have marked what you are about to write.LLB essays and dissertations, at a UK law school.
I have set the exam questions.Public International Law and UK Constitutional Law.
I know the LLB and LLM grading scale from the inside.PhD, LLM with First Class honours and LLB, University of Aberdeen.
Trained to teach, not only to practise.Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.