Section of Litigation
committee Content style sheet
Section of Litigation committee periodicals follow The
Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) for text, Merriam
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) for spelling, and The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation
(19th edition) for endnotes, except where noted below.
general
• Section of Litigation, not Litigation Section
abbreviations
• No quotation marks around abbreviations or acronyms in parentheses. Example: (IRS) not (“IRS”)
• Abbreviate United States when used as an adjective
(U.S. Supreme Court) but spell out as a noun.
capitalization
• The following are not capitalized:
• administration; Clinton administration
• brain trust
• cabinet
• church and state
• city hall (referring to municipal government)
• civil service
• congressional
• executive, legislative, or judicial branch
• post office
• state
• twentieth century
• State and City are capitalized when used as part of
an entity’s full legal title: City of Chicago, Commonwealth of Virginia, State of Rhode Island
• ABA. Capitalize the following and similar words:
• Annual Meeting
• Association (referring to the ABA)
• Council (ABA)
• Midyear Meeting (ABA)
• Sections/Forums/Divisions (referring to ABA)
• Acts and codes
Capitalize only when referring to a specific act:
• Robinson-Patnam Act; the act
• the Internal Revenue Code: the code
• Lowercase section, article, title, part, and subpart
when referring to part of a statute in text.
• Courts and circuits
Capitalize courts only when referring to the U.S. Supreme Court or when naming any court in full:
• the Court (when referring to the U.S. Supreme
Court)
• the Illinois Supreme Court
• the supreme court (referring to a state supreme
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court)
• the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• the U.S. District Court for the Southern District
of New York
• the U.S. district court
• the court of appeals (plural: courts of appeals)
• Capitalize circuit only when used with a circuit
number: the Seventh Circuit
• the circuit court
Civil titles and offices: Follow the Chicago Manual of
Style: Upper case only when they immediately precede
a personal name—as part of the name:
• President Clinton; the president of the United
States, the president, the presidency; Vice President
Al Gore but Al Gore, vice president of the United
States
• the secretary of state; the secretary of defense;
Secretary of State George C. Marshall
Constitutions
• Capitalize only when name any constitution in full
or when referring to the U.S. Constitution.
• Capitalize parts of the U.S. Constitution when
referring to them in text (although not in citations):
• First Amendment; Due Process Clause; Contract
Clause
Headings and Titles
Capitalize the first and last word, the word immediately following any colon, and all other words except
articles (a, the, an), conjunctions (and, or, for, etc.),
the to in infinitives, and prepositions of five or fewer
letters (of, Between, under). Note: This is a departure
from the Chicago Manual, which calls for lowercase
of all prepositions regardless of length unless they are
the first or last words.
If a complete sentence follows a colon, start that sentence with a cap.
commas
• No comma between last name and Roman numeral
(Example: John Dickinson Winkleman IV).
• No comma between month and year (January 1994).
• Use a comma in a series of three or more elements
when a conjunction joins the last two elements. (Examples: the lawyers, the judges, and the legislators.)
• Use a comma both before and after such dates and
words as these:
• The office was closed July 4, 1994, because of the
holiday.
• The meeting was held in the Washington, D.C., area.
• ComputerGraphics, Inc., is a new company.
• Do not use commas between parts of a compound
predicate (two or more verbs having the same subject)
unless needed for clarity. Example: The report summarizes recent legal decisions and concludes by analyzing
the legal doctrines.
Foreign words
• Italicize only those foreign words and phrases not
yet incorporated into common English usage. Do not
italicize Latin words, abbreviations, and phrases commonly used in legal writing (except for Id., which is
always italicized).
Examples: ad hoc, pro bono, res judicata, et al; for less
commonly occurring usages, use italics, as in qui tam
hyphens
• The fewer hyphens, the better (nonlawyer,
multinational). Check Webster’s and CMS.
• ABA-approved schools
• coauthor
• common-law (as an adjective)
• cosponsor
• cross-examination
• ex-spouse (see Webster’s for “ex” words)
• high-level position
• law-related topics
• miniskirt (mini generally takes the combined form;
see Webster’s)
• multiuse, multipurpose (generally not hyphenated—see Webster’s)
• quasi-judicial
• long-range planning
• overpopulated (over generally not hyphenated—
see Webster’s)
• postadolescent (post generally not hyphenated—
see Webster’s)
• pretrial (pre generally not hyphenated—
see Webster’s)
• Follow Rule 7.85 in the Chicago Manual of Style as a
guide to hyphen use in compound words.
• Words preceded by “pre,” “non,” and “anti” are
almost always not hyphenated. Check Webster’s for
exceptions.
• Do not use a hyphen with an adverb ending in -ly
plus an adjective or participle (e.g., highly developed
curriculum, publicly held company, athletically gifted
students, closely held corporations).
numbers
• Spell out whole numbers from one through nine.
Use Arabic for 10 and above (example: The mayor
received 161 votes) or in series of numbers where a
complete spelling would be confusing (example: The
ages of the eight members of the city council are 42,
43 (two members), 54, 24, 63, 89, and 25.).
• Abbreviate numbers correctly, especially in citations.
See Rule 9.60 in the Chicago Manual of Style.
• about a hundred, about a thousand (rather than approximately or around)
• about a hundred, about a thousand (spell out unless a
definite number)
• centuries are spelled out and lower case (twentieth
century)
• spell out decades—eighties, nineties (not ‘80s, ‘90s)
• dollars—$11, not $11.00
• one half the hourly rate; one-half share (hyphen if adjective)
• millions—4 million, 6 million, $10 million
percentages
• Percentages are set in numerals, with percent spelled
out: Example: Only 45 percent of the electorate votes.
possessives
• Use attorney fees rather than attorney’s fees or attorneys’ fees.
• Use an apostrophe followed by “s” for possessives of
words ending in “s.” Examples: Congress’s message;
Thomas’s decision
quotations
• If a quotation has fewer than 50 words, use quotation
marks and incorporate it into the text. If more than 50
words, use a block quote without quotation marks. All
quotations must be cited properly.
• Do not indicate omission of words before or after a
quoted phrase or clause or where a quotation obviously begins in the middle of a sentence.
• Indicate language omitted at the end of a quoted
sentence by an ellipsis (three dots) between the last
word quoted and the final punctuation of the sentence
quoted.
• Place commas and periods inside quotation marks;
colons, semicolons, and footnote references outside.
miscellaneous
• That versus which: Use which preceded by a comma
if the clause is nonrestrictive (could be eliminated
without changing essential meaning of the sentence) but
that if the clause is restrictive (critical to the correct meaning).
Examples:
• The trial, which was held in Chicago, lasted for
more than six weeks.
• The trial that was held in Chicago lasted for six
weeks while the New York hearing took only a
month.
• Do not use “since” as a synonym for “because.”
• Do not use apostrophes unless they serve a function
or purpose. Example: 1990s, not 1990’s.
• Do not split infinitives.
• Strive for gender neutrality whenever possible. Never
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use plural pronouns (they, theirs) when referring to a
singular noun.
Em dashes. “—” space should be closed up around
two hyphens.
Use a.m., p.m.
Compare to/compare with—compare to generally
metaphorical: “I compare her to a summer’s day”;
compare with generally is to compare for likenesses
and differences: “Compared with analyzing bid proposals from printers, gum surgery is painless.”
Different from (not different than)
In order to (avoid use, it is usually superfluous)
• Not only . . . but also. Generally but part is included
for parallelism; be sure both parts of the phrase are
properly placed for the emphasis intended; comma
usually not necessary.
• If a complete sentence is within parens, capitalize and
use periods.
• website, webpage—not Web site, Web page
• email—not e-mail
• online—not on-line or on line
• Internet—not internet
• blog—not blawg