Constructing citations for unfamiliar sources

The first page of Executive Order 14028 presents several numbers and dates. The instrument is dated May 12, 2021. Its Federal Register publication is dated May 17, 2021. The publication begins at page 26,633 of volume 86. The PDF contains its own electronic page count. Those coordinates perform different jobs.

Annotated model

Exec. Order No. 14,028, § 1, 86 Fed. Reg. 26,633 (May 17, 2021).

The order number identifies the instrument; section 1 identifies the provision; volume 86 and page 26,633 identify this publication; May 17 is the publication date used in this Federal Register model. The signing date remains part of the source record. It must not silently replace the publication date while leaving the rest of the citation looking unchanged.

Put it in a sentence. In its original 2021 text, Executive Order 14028 made prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation of cyber incidents an administration policy priority. Exec. Order No. 14,028, § 1, 86 Fed. Reg. 26,633 (May 17, 2021). The time limitation belongs in the sentence because this demonstration concerns the inspected original text. It does not represent a search for every later amendment or revocation.

Suppose your proposition instead concerns a deadline created in a later section. Copying the model and leaving § 1 would produce a polished citation to the wrong provision. Find the operative section, inspect its trigger and any qualification, and replace the section locator. If a printed page pinpoint is needed as well, take it from the Federal Register page number printed on the document, not the PDF viewer's counter.

Repair the research before repairing punctuation. An archived order and a current policy statement may have different purposes. To describe what the order originally said, identify the historical instrument. To describe an obligation governing conduct now, research the relevant later instruments and effective provisions. A citation formatter cannot decide which task the sentence requires.

State and local executive orders need the issuing jurisdiction and the identification system that jurisdiction uses. Do not give a governor's or mayor's order a federal publication label. Where numbering restarts by year or administration, retain enough date and issuer information to distinguish the order before applying a shorter local form.

An online municipal source can be a charter, a consolidated code, a newly enacted local law, a regulation, or a proposed ordinance. The host's navigation may display all of them together. A search result headed with a city name does not settle which one supports the sentence.

New York City's Law Department directs readers to a contracted American Legal Publishing site for the City's Charter, Administrative Code, and Rules. On that site, Administrative Code § 1-101 supplies the code's short title. This is a useful small example because the provision tells the researcher how the source names itself.

Annotated running-text model in the New York reporting style

Administrative Code of the City of New York § 1-101.

The code name identifies a particular city's compilation. The section identifies the provision. The New York Law Reports Style Manual permits this full name and a shorter listed form, Administrative Code of City of NY. Its instructions concern the reporting style; this example does not establish a filing requirement for every New York court.

Put it in a sentence. Administrative Code of the City of New York § 1-101 identifies the short title of the City's administrative code. That is the narrow proposition inspected here. No claim about housing, licensing, penalties, or another substantive chapter follows from reading the short-title provision.

The page displayed an October 2026 current-edition label when checked. It also carried a notice that the website may not yet reflect the latest legislation or rules. Record both facts. A currency label is useful publication information; it is not evidence that every newly enacted law has already been consolidated.

Choose the document that answers the question. If the question is what a code currently says, start with the code and examine its update information. If the question is what a particular local law changed, retrieve the enacted law and its amendment instructions. If the question concerns conduct on an earlier date, find the applicable version and effective-date provisions. If the question concerns a proposal, keep its proposed status visible. One city can produce all four documents with similar titles.

A commercial host does not turn the City's enactment into the host's legal rule. Equally, the government link does not make the host's editorial commentary, software, or other separate material public domain. Cite the enactment for the legal proposition and distinguish any publisher explanation that you actually use.

A patent document may expose a filing number, a publication number, a grant number, a kind code, and several dates on its first page. Treat those as a map of related documents. Combining the grant number with an application's publication date can identify a document that never existed in that form.

The inspected facsimile of U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 is marked US 10,000,000 B2 and dated June 19, 2018. Its face also identifies application 14/643,719, filed March 10, 2015, and prior publication US 2016/0266243 A1, dated September 15, 2016. Those entries let us distinguish the issued document from its earlier publication without speculating about present ownership or enforceability.

Annotated model

U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000, cl. 1 (issued June 19, 2018).

The national label and patent number identify the grant; cl. 1 selects a claim within that document; the date identifies issuance. Preserve the B2 kind code in the research record and use it in the citation if the receiving system calls for a publication identifier with that code. This handbook's displayed legal-citation model uses the patent number and an express issuance date.

Put it in a sentence. Claim 1 of the issued patent identifies a laser detection and ranging system. U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000, cl. 1 (issued June 19, 2018). That sentence identifies what the claim addresses. It is not an analysis of claim construction, validity, infringement, or current legal status.

The USPTO's kind-code table distinguishes modern A1 utility application publications from B1 and B2 utility grants; for grants issued on or after January 2, 2001, B1 indicates no pre-grant publication and B2 indicates a pre-grant publication. The table also contains historical classifications. Do not apply a modern code description to every old document solely because a letter matches.

Choose the locator after choosing the assertion. A statement about what an inventor claimed calls for the relevant claim and its complete language. A statement about an illustrated arrangement may call for a figure. A statement about a passage in the description may call for printed columns and lines. The cover-page abstract is a different location. Do not give the abstract's explanation a claim number or present a drawing as the text of a claim.

Worked repair. A draft note reads “Patent 10,000,000, filed September 15, 2016.” The inspected face does not support that combination. It gives March 10, 2015 as the filing date, September 15, 2016 as the prior publication date, and June 19, 2018 as the date of the issued patent. If the writer used the issued patent, the model above identifies it. If the writer relied on the earlier publication, the writer should retrieve that publication and cite its own identifier and inspected location. The grant's reference to the earlier document helps locate it; it does not establish that the earlier and issued claim texts are identical.

A docket exhibit can reproduce a patent while adding exhibit labels and electronic page numbers. The patent and the exhibit then have separate identities. Cite the patent for its text and, when the litigation task requires it, the record exhibit for where that text appears in the case record. Keep the original printed coordinates rather than treating an added exhibit page as a patent column.

A technical standard's edition may be central to a legal argument. A newer edition on a standards organization's website does not, by itself, tell you which edition a regulation incorporates. Build two connected source records: one for the legal provision doing the incorporating, and one for the incorporated document actually used.

The inspected 2025 annual CFR text provides a concrete example. Section 1910.178(a)(2) addresses specified design and construction requirements for new powered industrial trucks acquired and used by an employer, identifies Part II of ANSI B56.1-1969, and states exceptions. Section 1910.6(e)(29) supplies the corresponding incorporation entry. Those are regulatory texts, not a substitute for reading the incorporated standard when its own requirements are at issue.

Annotated model for the regulatory proposition

29 C.F.R. § 1910.178(a)(2) (2025).

The title and section identify the federal regulation, paragraph (a)(2) narrows the support, and 2025 identifies the inspected annual edition. A sentence specifically discussing the incorporation entry can cite 29 C.F.R. § 1910.6(e)(29) (2025). A sentence discussing the rule about changing incorporated editions can cite 29 C.F.R. § 1910.6(a)(1) (2025).

Put it in a sentence. The inspected 2025 regulation identifies the 1969 edition in its incorporation provision. 29 C.F.R. § 1910.178(a)(2) (2025). This statement describes that annual text. It does not claim that the annual edition has been checked against every later regulatory amendment.

Complete the second record. For a proposition drawn from the standard itself, collect the issuing organization, complete designation, title, edition or revision, and exact clause, figure, or table. Also record the legal provision connecting that edition to the dispute. If you have not obtained the standard, say what the regulation identifies and stop short of asserting the unseen standard's substantive requirement.

The first inspection of this example also exposed a practical search problem: a search extract associated with a broader CFR file showed a different final digit in the standard's year. The retrieved section PDF and its operative cross-reference identified 1969. That discrepancy is a reason to inspect the underlying text and preserve the exact source used. A search extract is a route to evidence, not the evidence to transcribe into a finished citation.

The incorporated ANSI standard was not obtained for this appendix. Accordingly, the models demonstrate the regulatory side of the connection and the source information still needed for a standard-specific proposition. They do not reproduce a private standard or invent one of its clauses.

Begin with the sentence you intend to support. Then fill five fields in ordinary words: issuing person or body; exact document identity; particular version or event; supporting location; reader's retrieval route. Add a separate line for the source's legal role. A draft bill, an issued patent, a private report, and a final agency order should never acquire the same authority merely because their citations contain similar numbers.

Write a complete identification before abbreviating. Apply an applicable source-specific convention next. If no directly applicable model is available, use a transparent form that preserves the decisive information and check the receiving instructions. A made-up abbreviation saves space at the cost of recoverability. A familiar abbreviation attached to the wrong kind of document is worse: it can make an error look settled.

Finally, ask another reader's question of your own work: could a person with this citation recover the exact document and inspect the exact support? If the answer depends on an unshared browser tab, an unnamed edition, or a date whose function is unclear, the research record is not finished. The source finder supplies routes into related chapters; it identifies orientation and research limits as well as fully worked instruction.

Checked October 8, 2026: Executive Order 14028, original Federal Register publication, first-page metadata and § 1; NYC Law Department's code gateway; Administrative Code § 1-101, section text and edition/currency notices; New York Law Reports Style Manual, §§ 3.1(b), 3.4 and Appendix 4; USPTO kind-code descriptions; U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 facsimile, face metadata and claim 1; and the 2025 annual CFR texts of § 1910.6 and § 1910.178, identified paragraphs. The patent facsimile is hosted by Google, not downloaded directly from the USPTO. These are bounded source inspections; no claim of present patent enforceability, complete city-code currency, or subsequent executive-order treatment is made.