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Introductory Signals

Geoffrey Bilder – 2009 March 23

In Legal CitationsCitation

So while doing some background reading today I realized that legal citations already widely support a form of “citation typing” in the form of “Introductory Signals“. The 10 introductory signals break down as follows…

In support of an argument:

   1) [no signal]. (NB that, apparently, this is increasingly deprecated.)

   2) accord;

   3) see;

   4) see also;

   5) cf.;

For Comparisons:

   6) compare … with …;

For contradiction:

   7) but see;

   8) but cf.;

For background:

   9) see generally;

And for examples:

   10) e.g.

Clever lawyers.