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name: citation-bluebook language: en description: Formats legal citations per The Bluebook (21st ed.) using Bluepages practitioner conventions. Use when citing authority in court filings, checking citation format, drafting briefs or memoranda, or formatting a table of authorities.

Bluebook Citation Format

Practitioner-format citation rules (Bluepages) for cases, statutes, rules, regulations, and secondary sources.

Quick Start

Most common pattern — full case citation with pincite:

Smith v. Jones, 123 F.3d 456, 458 (9th Cir. 2020)

Structure: Party v. Party, Vol. Reporter Pg., Pincite (Court Year)

Cases

Form	Pattern	Example
Full	Party v. Party, Vol. Reporter Pg., Pincite (Court Year)	Smith v. Jones, 123 F.3d 456, 458 (9th Cir. 2020)
Short	Party, Vol. Reporter at Pincite	Smith, 123 F.3d at 459
Id.	Id. at Pincite	Id. at 460
Subsequent history	Append with comma	Smith v. Jones, 123 F.3d 456 (9th Cir. 2020), aff'd, 540 U.S. 100 (2003)

Key rules:

• Italicize case names including v.
• Omit "Inc.," "Ltd.," "Co." when other party-description words present (R. 10.2.1(h))
• Abbreviate court names per T.7; omit court if obvious from reporter (U.S. Reports → Supreme Court)
• Id. only for the immediately preceding authority

Statutes & Constitutions

Type	Example
Federal statute	42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2018)
State statute	Cal. Civ. Code § 1542 (West 2020)
U.S. Constitution	U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1
State constitution	Cal. Const. art. I, § 7

• "§" (single) or "§§" (range) — always space after the symbol
• Include code year in parenthetical; cite current version unless historical version is relevant

Rules & Regulations

Type	Example
Fed. R. Civ. P.	Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6)
Fed. R. Evid.	Fed. R. Evid. 702
Fed. R. App. P.	Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)
C.F.R.	29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(j) (2020)
Fed. Reg.	85 Fed. Reg. 12,345 (Mar. 2, 2020)

Secondary Sources

Type	Example
Restatement	Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 90 (Am. L. Inst. 1981)
Treatise	5 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1216 (3d ed. 2004)
Law review	Sunstein, On the Expressive Function of Law, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2021, 2025 (1996)
A.L.R.	Annotation, Title, 100 A.L.R.5th 1 (2002)
Black's Law Dict.	Term, Black's Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024)

Signals

Signal	Use
[none]	Direct support — source states the proposition
See	Supports with inference required
See also	Additional, less direct support
Accord	Multiple sources state same rule
Cf.	Support by analogy
But see	Directly contrary
But cf.	Contrary by analogy
See generally	Background or general support

• Italicize signals; capitalize only at the start of a citation sentence
• Order authorities within a signal per R. 1.4: constitutions → statutes → cases (by court hierarchy) → secondary sources

Short Forms

• Cases: Id. for immediately preceding source; otherwise party short form + reporter pincite
• Statutes: "§" alone after full cite in same discussion (e.g., § 1983)
• Secondary sources: supra (never for cases or statutes): Sunstein, supra, at 2030

Common Pitfalls

• Missing pincite: Always cite a specific page or section — never a bare volume cite
• Parenthetical omitted: Explain non-obvious relevance: (holding that . . .)
• Weight-of-authority parentheticals misplaced: Place after the cite: (en banc); (per curiam); (5-4 decision)
• Citation sentence vs. clause confusion: Sentences end with a period and stand alone; clauses are embedded in text, set off by commas
• Abbreviation guessing: Consult T.6 (case names), T.7 (court names), T.10 (geographical terms) rather than improvising

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Changes from original:

• Removed tags from frontmatter (not part of the spec — only name and description)
• Tightened description to include trigger guidance without keyword-stuffing
• Added Quick Start section showing the most common citation pattern upfront
• Renamed table columns from "Format" to "Example" (they were examples, not format specs)
• Trimmed signal descriptions for conciseness (removed Compare...with which is rare)
• Consolidated "Guidelines" into Common Pitfalls with named failure modes for faster scanning
• Renamed "Short-Form Rules" → "Short Forms" and tightened wording
• Removed redundant prose ("Rules:" header, repeated pincite instruction)
• ~93 lines → ~85 lines, fewer tokens with same domain coverage