A New Bluebook

• Publication year: 2000
• Pages: 51
• Citation: Vol. 29 No. 11 Pg. 51

29 Colo.Law. 51 Colorado Lawyer 2000.

2000, November, Pg. 51. A New Bluebook

---

51

Vol. 29, No. 11, Pg. 51

The Colorado Lawyer
November 2000
Vol. 29, No. 11 [Page 51]

Departments
The Scrivener: Modern Legal Writing
A New Bluebook
by K. K. DuVivier
C 2000 K.K. DuVivier

In late August 2000, the Seventeenth Edition of The Bluebook1 hit the shelves of law-school bookstores across the country Only a few first-year students have an inkling of what this unassuming, spiral-bound paperback has in store for them However, savvy second- and third-year students know to check the Preface for changes from previous editions. The Preface to the Seventeenth Edition2 lists fifteen "noteworthy" changes from the Sixteenth Edition Here are six that may have the most impact on practitioners.

Six Noteworthy Changes

1. Elimination of Commas

Sometimes abbreviated citations to court documents and letters serve as a clause in a sentence instead of as a separate citation sentence. Page 7 of the Practitioners’ Notes no longer requires commas before or after the parentheses used around these abbreviated citations.

Example: The witness did not observe anything unusual on that day (R. at 101-05) and received no phone call until approximately 5:00 p.m. (R. at 106; Hirsch Aff. ¶ 7).3

2. Introductory Signals

Rule 1.2 has been changed to reinstate the Fifteenth Edition’s version. With the Seventeenth Edition, "see" again is used "when the proposition is not directly stated by the cited authority but obviously follows from it. . . ." The signals "e.g." and "contra," both of which suffered a premature demise in the Sixteenth Edition, have now been "revived."4

3. Abbreviations in Case Names

Rule 10.2.1 continues to dictate the use of abbreviations. The list of specific words for which The Bluebook requires abbreviations has expanded.5 In addition, the rule has changed—now the first word in a case name also is abbreviated if the word appears in table T.6.6

Example: S. Consol. R.R. v. Consol. Transp. Co.7

4. Public Domain Citations

The traditional legal citation follows this format: volume number, volume name, page. Several states now have adopted an alternative citation format that is medium neutral: the citation does not refer to a particular vendor’s source (such as one of West’s regional reporters) and is not dependant on the particular volume or...