Legislation

Use title case for the official titles of acts, ordinances, regulations and bills before parliament.

Always include the year on first mention, and add the jurisdiction in round brackets at the end if this needs clarification. For later mentions in the same text, you can use a short version.

If you're dealing with more than 1 piece of legislation, you might need to make the short title more specific. And if there's the possibility of confusion, keep an initial capital on the noun.

Traditionally, people have styled different pieces of legislation differently to show the legal hierarchy. Acts and ordinances were formatted in italics, while lesser regulations and unpublished bills were set in roman type.

As the ASG entry on publication titles explains, we recommend not using italics, no matter what type of legislation you’re dealing with. This will make referencing legal instruments more consistent and improve legibility for the digital age. 

When referring to parts of legislation, use the full word if it forms a natural part of the sentence.

Otherwise, use the standard short form. Write the short form in lower case with no full stop and add a space between it and the numeral that follows.

The standard short forms are:

Where you need to give the jurisdiction for a piece of legislation after the title, use the standard short form: