A citation in OSCOLAOSCOLA-য় একটা উদ্ধৃতি

Why OSCOLA looks different

OSCOLA, the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, puts its citations in footnotes rather than in the body of the text. That is the first thing to get used to if you have written in a style that puts a name and a year in brackets after the sentence. In OSCOLA a sentence that draws on a source ends in ordinary punctuation, a superscript number sits right after that punctuation, and the citation itself is at the foot of the page under the matching number. The text stays readable as prose; the footnote carries the apparatus.

The number goes after the punctuation, not before it, and it goes at the end of the clause or sentence the source supports, not in the middle of it. A footnote marker sitting in front of a comma is one of the smaller mistakes markers see most often, because a word processor's default habits point the other way.

The four shapes

Everything else in OSCOLA is detail on top of these four patterns. Learn the order of the elements and the punctuation between them, because both are fixed: no comma is optional and no element moves.

1. A case. Case name [year] volume Report abbreviation first page, pinpoint if needed. The case name is italicised. If the report has both a neutral citation and a law report reference, OSCOLA gives the neutral citation first, in square brackets because it is assigned by the court and does not depend on the volume of a printed series.
2. A statute. Short title, given in full, with the year as part of the title and no italics. A section is cited with "s" and the number, a subsection in brackets straight after it, with no space: s 12(3).
3. A journal article. Author, 'Title of the article in single quotation marks' [year] volume Journal Name abbreviation first page, pinpoint if needed. The author's name is given as it appears on the article, first name or initials before the surname, which is the opposite order from the bibliography.
4. A book. Author, Title of the Book in Italics (edition, Publisher year). The edition is only given from the second edition on; a first edition is not marked as one.

The pinpoint

A pinpoint is the specific page, paragraph or section within the source the footnote is actually relying on, and it comes after the rest of the citation and its comma. For a case with numbered paragraphs, usually one with a neutral citation, the pinpoint is a paragraph number in square brackets: [45]. For an older report without numbered paragraphs, it is a page number. For a book or article, it is a page number, given plainly with no "p" in most OSCOLA guidance, though some faculties ask for one; follow whichever your own department's style sheet specifies and be consistent.

A citation with no pinpoint is telling the reader the whole source supports the point, which is rarely true and reads as though the point was not checked against a specific passage. Add one whenever the claim rests on something a particular page or paragraph said.

Ibid and the cross-reference

Ibid, short for ibidem, "in the same place", repeats the citation in the footnote immediately before it and nothing else. It can carry its own pinpoint if the new reference is to a different page or paragraph of the same source: ibid 23 says the same source as the note above, page twenty-three this time. Ibid is only for the note directly above. If two footnotes intervene between the first citation of a source and the next mention of it, ibid is wrong, because it would repeat whatever the intervening footnote cited instead.

What OSCOLA uses for that situation is a cross-reference by footnote number: "(n 4)" after a shortened form of the citation, pointing back to the footnote where the source first appeared in full. A source is given in full the first time it is cited in the piece, and every later mention is the short form with a note number, never the full citation typed out again.

Do not use ibid across a change of source. It says "the same place as the note above" and nothing softens that: if the footnote above cited a different case or a different article, ibid would misattribute the pinpoint to the wrong source.

The bibliography

An OSCOLA bibliography is not one alphabetical list. Cases come first, usually in their own alphabetical table, then legislation in its own table, and only after those two does a list of everything else follow: books, articles, reports, in one alphabetical sequence by the author's surname.

That last list reverses the order the footnotes used for a name. A footnote gives a name forename-first, the way it would read in a sentence: Amina Chowdhury, 'Title of the article'. The bibliography gives the same name surname-first, so it can be alphabetised: Chowdhury A, Title of the Book. This is not an inconsistency to fix. Footnotes are read as prose running down the page, and bibliographies are looked up, so the two lists order the same name differently on purpose, for the way each one is actually used.

Where people go wrong

• Citing in the text with a name and a year, the way a social science style does, instead of a footnote number. OSCOLA has no in-text citation at all.
• A footnote number placed before the punctuation of the sentence it belongs to, rather than after it.
• A case name left in ordinary type instead of italics, or a statute's short title italicised when it should not be.
• No pinpoint on a citation that is really relying on one page or one paragraph.
• Ibid used across a change of source, after a different footnote has come between the two mentions.
• The full citation typed out a second time where a short form and a note number would do, or the reverse: a short form used before the source has ever been given in full.
• One alphabetical list in the bibliography, with cases and legislation mixed in among the books and articles instead of given their own tables first.

The writing desk's citation chip renders a footnote in this shape from what you give it: it builds the case, statute, article or book pattern correctly, adds an ibid with a pinpoint where the note before it is the same source, and writes the cross-reference by number where it is not.