Typeface by Document Type
Which words go italic, roman or small capitals, in a brief, a memo or a law review.
Typeface tells your reader what kind of word comes next before they read it. Italics flag names, titles and the short words that comment on a citation; roman carries the address. The document you write, not the source you cite, picks the system. Below, one citation is set for a brief, then for a law-review footnote. Only the case name changes.
In a brief, motion or memo
See United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc., 598 U.S. 739, 749 (2023).
- 1 signal: italic
- 2 case name: every word italic, ex rel. and v. included
- 3 comma after the name: roman
- 4 address: volume, reporter, pages, year, all roman
The same citation in a law-review footnote
See United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc., 598 U.S. 739, 749 (2023).
- 5 signal: still italic
- 6 case name: roman in a footnote citation; ex rel. stays italic
- 7 address: unchanged
Which words are italic is citation form. Which font and point size the page uses is a court’s format rule (6.8), and it never changes how a citation is built. The opinion texts we count elsewhere lose their italics, so each statement here rests on a rule, an official manual or a published guide; the two counts come from journal PDFs that keep their fonts.
6.1Which system: brief, memo or law review
In the print and Kindle editions
6.2Briefs, motions and memos: what goes in italics
In the print and Kindle editions
6.3Where italics start and stop
In the print and Kindle editions
6.4Italics or underlining: pick one
In the print and Kindle editions
6.5Law-review footnotes: roman, italics and small capitals
In the print and Kindle editions
6.6Latin, foreign words and procedural phrases
In the print and Kindle editions
6.7Court style manuals: whose typeface binds you
In the print and Kindle editions
6.8Font and type size: format rules, not citation form
In the print and Kindle editions
6.9Errors to catch
In the print and Kindle editions