Table of Contents

Citation, bibliography and footnote

Table of Contents

Theoretical overview

Citation

A “citation” is the way you tell your readers that certain material in your work came from another source

It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again, like information about the author, the title of the work, the name and location of the company that published your copy of the source, the date your copy was published, the page numbers of the material you are borrowing etc.

Thus in legal research, a legal Citation is a standardized set of guidelines that allows the writer of legal discourse to refer to legal authorities and sources with enough clarity to enable the reader to find or follow those references.

 This referencing of statements and sources of law must be done clearly, concisely and consistently to ensure efficient and accurate location of these resources.

This style includes the full citation to the authority immediately after the relevant text, directly or in parentheses (depending on the referencing format). If one plans to refer to the source later, a short form is provided alongside the citation. Alternatively, just the short form is used throughout the text and the complete citation is provided in the bibliography/works cited section (as in the APA format).

Bibliography

bibliography is a list of all of the sources you have used (whether referenced or not) in the process of researching your work.

 In general, Bibliography is a complete, alphabetical list of all sources used for an academic piece, which appears at the very end.

 It can include sources that may not have been cited directly in the piece itself, but were referred to by the author for the purpose of research and writing. Bibliography serves a different function than footnotes or endnotes, the latter providing more specific information than the entry in the bibliography. a bibliography should include:

  • the authors’ names
  • the titles of the works
  • the names and locations of the companies that published your copies of the sources
  • the dates your copies were published
  • the page numbers of your sources (if they are part of multi-source volumes)

footnote and endnote

Footnotes and endnotes are popular ways of referencing in legal writing. They appear at the end of a claim, sentence or word to indicate its authority, in accordance with the uniform reference format chosen by the author. 

They may also be used to represent non-bibliographic sources like comments or observations. The main difference between the two is that footnotes appear at the bottom of the same page, whereas endnotes appear at the end of the entire paper all together. Their advantages and disadvantages are corollaries of this difference – footnotes are easily located and guide readers to the authority directly, but on the other hand footnotes can appear cluttered, distract the reader and disrupt the format. On the other hand, endnotes do not clutter the page and allow the reader to access all the authorities in one section – which may also be cumbersome or confusing for someone looking for a specific source. When choosing between the two, one should keep in mind their purpose of referencing – is it critical to have that source cited on the same page? Are there too many citations compromising the format of the paper? Another important consideration is the length of the paper itself – for shorter pieces like essays and short articles, endnotes are preferable as they don’t break the readers’ flow and are easy to locate. This is also why most blog articles use endnotes for referencing non-digital sources, if at all. For longer pieces that are divided into various chapters or sections, footnotes may be more convenient to guide readers to an authority or further information.

Points to remember

  • A “citation” is the way you tell your readers that certain material in your work came from another source It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again.
  • Bibliography is a complete, alphabetical list of all sources used for an academic piece, which appears at the very end.
  • footnotes appear at the bottom of the same page, whereas endnotes appear at the end of the entire paper all together.
  • . For longer pieces that are divided into various chapters or sections, footnotes may be more convenient to guide readers to an authority or further information

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