Which part of the book are you actually supposed to use?
The Bluebook has two systems. The Bluepages (the blue-edged section at the front, rules B1–B21) govern documents submitted to courts and, at almost every school, your 1L memos and briefs. The whitepages (rules 1–21) govern law review footnotes. The substantive rules are largely the same; the visible difference is typeface. In Bluepages format you italicize case names, article titles, and book titles, and everything else is ordinary roman type. In whitepages format, book titles, author names in books, and periodical names appear in LARGE AND SMALL CAPS.
The tables at the back do most of the real work. T1 gives the correct reporter and court abbreviation for every U.S. jurisdiction. T6 abbreviates words in case names. T7 abbreviates court names. T10 abbreviates geographic terms. T13 abbreviates periodical names. When you are unsure how to shorten something, the answer is in a table, not in a rule.
The 21st edition (2020) is the version most courses teach. Confirm which edition your professor requires before you buy or borrow one, because abbreviations do change between editions (the 21st, for example, shortened 'Am. Law Inst.' to 'Am. L. Inst.'). Many schools also permit or require the free online guide from Cornell's LII or a local court rule instead; ask, because the grader marks against whatever they assigned.
How do you cite a case?
The full citation has five parts: case name, volume, reporter abbreviation, first page, pincite, and a parenthetical with the court and year. Rule 10 controls. Example: Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945). The court is omitted from the parenthetical when the reporter itself identifies it — U.S. means the Supreme Court, so you write (1945), not (U.S. 1945).
For federal appellate cases, name the circuit: Ashcroft v. Iqbal is a Supreme Court case, but a Second Circuit decision cites as F.4th (or F.3d, F.2d for older cases) with the parenthetical (2d Cir. 2022). District courts use F. Supp. 3d, F. Supp. 2d, or F. Supp., with the district identified: (S.D.N.Y. 2021). For state cases in court documents, Bluepages B10.1.3 tells you to follow local rules; absent a local rule, cite the regional reporter and identify the court and year, e.g., Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 162 N.E. 99, 100 (N.Y. 1928).
Abbreviate the case name using T6 and T10, drop everything after the first party on each side, and delete 'et al.' Use only the last name for individuals. Add weight-of-authority parentheticals when they matter: (en banc), (per curiam), (plurality opinion), (Kagan, J., dissenting). Subsequent history follows the parenthetical: , aff'd, 500 U.S. 1 (1991) or , rev'd on other grounds.
Always give a pincite when you are referring to something specific, which is nearly always. A citation to the first page alone tells the reader you did not find the page.
How do you cite statutes, rules, and the Constitution?
Federal statutes in the U.S. Code: title, U.S.C., section symbol, section number, and the code edition year in parentheses — 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2018). Use §§ for multiple sections and never start a sentence with the symbol; spell out 'Section' there. Session laws use the public law number and Statutes at Large: Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010).
State statutes follow T1's format for that state exactly, including whether the publisher goes in the parenthetical. Look it up every time; the formats are genuinely inconsistent across states, which is why guessing fails.
Court rules and evidence rules take no year: Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); Fed. R. Evid. 403; Fed. R. App. P. 4. Constitutional provisions take no year either: U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1; U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Regulations use the C.F.R. with a year: 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5 (2023). A regulation not yet in the C.F.R. cites to the Federal Register by volume, page, and exact date.
How do you cite secondary sources?
Law review articles (Rule 16): Author, Article Title, Volume Abbreviated Journal First Page, Pincite (Year). Example: Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, 195 (1890). The title is italicized in Bluepages format; the journal name is abbreviated using T13.
Books (Rule 15): Author, Title Page (Edition Year) — in Bluepages format the title is italicized. Treatises follow the same structure, including volume number when the treatise is multivolume. Restatements and model codes: Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A (Am. L. Inst. 1965); Model Rules of Pro. Conduct r. 1.6 (Am. Bar Ass'n 2020).
Internet sources (Rule 18): prefer the print or official source when one exists and is accessible. When you cite online material, give author, title, the site name, the full URL, and a date. If the source shows no date, add a visited-on parenthetical. Do not cite Wikipedia in a graded document.
When do you use id., supra, and case short forms?
Id. refers to the immediately preceding authority and only when that footnote or citation sentence contained exactly one authority (Rule 4.1). Add a pincite if the page changes: Id. at 497. Capitalize it when it begins a citation sentence; keep it lowercase mid-sentence. Id. is italicized, including the period.
Case short form once you have given the full cite and it is not the immediately preceding authority: Brown, 347 U.S. at 495. Use one party's name — the plaintiff's, unless that name is a common litigant like the government or a state, in which case use the other party. Statutes shorten to § 1983 or, in some contexts, 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Supra and hereinafter are for secondary sources — books, articles, legislative hearings, and the like. Rule 4.2 forbids supra for cases, statutes, constitutions, and regulations. Form: Warren & Brandeis, supra note 12, at 196. 'Hereinafter' is for sources with cumbersome names you will cite repeatedly.
Which signal do you use, and in what order?
Rule 1.2 governs. No signal means the cited authority directly states the proposition, identifies the source of a quotation, or is the authority referred to in the text. See means the authority clearly supports the proposition but requires an inferential step. See also is additional supporting authority when you have already cited the best sources. Cf. means the authority supports a different but analogous proposition; you should explain why in a parenthetical. Contra is the direct opposite of no signal; but see is the opposite of see. See generally is background. E.g. combines: see, e.g.,.
Signals are italicized. When a signal begins a citation sentence, capitalize it. Multiple authorities under one signal are separated by semicolons and ordered by Rule 1.4: constitutions, then statutes, then treaties, then cases (federal before state, higher courts before lower, more recent before older within a court), then legislative materials, then administrative materials, then secondary sources.
Explanatory parentheticals go after the citation and, per Rule 1.5, usually begin with a present participle: (holding that minimum contacts must not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice). Use them liberally; a string cite without parentheticals rarely earns its space.
What mistakes cost the most points?
Most citation deductions are mechanical, not conceptual. Learn these and you eliminate the bulk of them.
One more: quotations of fifty or more words must be block quoted — indented on both margins, single-spaced, no quotation marks, with the citation flush left on the line after the quote (Rule 5.1). Under fifty words, keep it in text with quotation marks. Alterations go in brackets, omissions get ellipses with spaces on both sides of each period, and altered capitalization at the start of a quote is shown as [T]he.
- Spacing (Rule 6.1(a)): close up adjacent single capitals — F.3d, N.Y., S.D.N.Y. — but leave a space when a unit is longer than one letter: S. Ct., F. Supp. 2d, Harv. L. Rev.
- Ordinals (Rule 6.2(b)): 2d and 3d, never 2nd or 3rd. So F.2d, 3d Cir., N.E.2d.
- Punctuation typeface: italicize the comma and period inside an italicized case name only when they are part of it; the comma after the case name is not italicized in Bluepages format.
- Missing pincites, and using 'at' where the reporter format doesn't call for it in a full cite.
- Citation sentences end with a period and stand alone; citation clauses are set off by commas within a sentence and support only that clause.
- Abbreviating case names in textual sentences — you don't. In text, write out 'International Shoe Co. v. Washington' subject to Rule 10.2.1's limited abbreviations.