Chapter 7Free sample

Abbreviations, Numbers, Capitals & Titles

When to shorten, how to space, and how to write numbers, capitals and titles.

An abbreviation is a promise that your reader can unpack it. Keep the promise and the citation gets shorter without getting harder to check. Break it and the reader goes looking for the wrong court, reporter or party. The two real citations below hold most of the shortenings this chapter teaches; each callout names the rule at work.

Where the spaces go, in one reported district-court case

Ryan, LLC v. FTC, 746 F. Supp. 3d 369 (N.D. Tex. 2024).

1 business designation: kept, no periods
2 initials used as a name: no periods
3 two shortened words: a period each, a space between
4 an ordinal counts as one capital, but Supp. is longer, so a space
5 N.D. closed up; a space before Tex.

How the words of a long party name shrink

U.S. Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 448 (1993).

6 U.S. belongs to the bank’s name; the United States as a party is never shortened
7 contraction: apostrophe, no period
8 a place inside a longer name is shortened (so is Am.)
9 words from the list, each with a period
10 business designation kept
11 locators are numerals: no words, no commas

Where the lists live: words, places and months, each with its counts, in Table D; state courts and reporters in Table A; federal courts and agencies in Table B; journals in Table E; history and explanatory phrases in Table F; the counts of reporter spacing in Table H.