44. Archtypical citation form

The standard form of citation in American law is derived from English case law practice. It usually follows the form of "a BB ccc", where "a" is a volume or title number, "BB" is the name of the publication or series, and "ccc" is the page number within the volume or the section of a statute. Depending on what is being cited, additional information may be needed, such as the state, the name of the court, the year, etc. A website which goes into detail on this is Peter Martin's Introduction to Basic Legal Citation. For a comprehensive explanation of US citation practice, and listings of models for most primary sources, please consult the BlueBook, published every five years by the Harvard Law Review Association.

45. Modern Citation Form

The growth of electronic sources has made the paper based citation form inadequate to represent information from the typically unpaginated computer file. Recently the concept of the "Universal" citation form has been developed through professional organisations and a range of court adminstrators. This form relies on internal information from the document itself to identify the text, so that it can be found in any source, paper or electronic, which follows these new rules. The best source of guidance on the modern form is the Universal Citation Guide published by the American Association of Law Libraries in 1999. However, it must be noted that this has yet to make much of an impression within the industry. In addition, a direct competitor to the Bluebook has been developed by the Association of Legal Writing Directors and is known as the ALWD Citation Manual.