If you’re writing a law assignment then there’s little doubt that, at some point, you’ll need to make reference to some previous research or cite a quotation from a legal journal. The citation style is quite simple, but remember that it is different from the citation of a book. The most important point is that …
First question: what is a book? You might think that seems a little obvious, but in OSCOLA terms a book is any publication that has an ISBN number. This is an International Standard Book Number, a ten or thirteen digit number that identifies a specific book. ISBN numbers have been in use since the 1970s …
Most law students’ and writers’ problems with OSCOLA formatting usually relate to the footnotes. The famous American philosopher described them as ‘little dogs yapping at the heels of the text’. However, bibliographies – that long list of all the works you’ve read (or should have read) in order to research your dissertation or thesis – …
Compiling and styling a bibliography in OSCOLA style Read More »
Footnotes are one of the primary features of OSCOLA, which is a footnote-based style. All citations of legal cases, statutes, books, journal articles, websites, anything that you have referred to in your research, appear in footnotes at the bottom of the page. So, in this article we’ll take a look at how to insert footnotes …
Good academic writing is enhanced with relevant quotations from the sources you have consulted during your research, or sometimes you’ll need to quote part of a statute or legal case to support an argument. It’s important to use the correct punctuation to indicate that the wording is a quotation, rather than your own. This attributes …
The ‘meaty’ part of your manuscript or essay, dissertation, thesis, the part that contains your writing, your words, is known in editing circles as the ‘running text’. Whilst the OSCOLA fourth edition guide does not set out any specific rules about font, line spacing or size, it does drop little hints here and there about …
What is OSCOLA? The Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities – OSCOLA – was developed at Oxford University in 2000. It is now in its fourth edition, which was published in 2012. The 61-page guide to legal referencing is published under a Creative Commons Agreement, so you can download a free copy of …
