OSCOLA Referencing Generator

Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted OSCOLA footnote, plus the matching bibliography entry, ready to paste into your essay, problem question or dissertation. OSCOLA (the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, 4th edition) is the footnote style used across UK law schools. This generator currently covers the secondary sources you cite most — books, journal articles, book chapters, reports, theses and websites — formatting names, titles and publication details to OSCOLA’s minimal-punctuation conventions. Dedicated support for citing cases and legislation is coming.

Used in: Law students and legal scholars in the United Kingdom and beyond. OSCOLA is the standard at UK law schools for essays, problem questions, case notes, dissertations and journal submissions, and is widely adopted internationally for common-law legal writing.

OSCOLA · 4th editionNotes & bibliography

Enter your source

Auto-cite from a DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID

Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.

Source type

A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.

Author

Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.

Year published

Add an author or a title and your formatted OSCOLA citation appears here instantly.

In your text

A raised footnote number follows the cited material, e.g. “… the encoding-specificity principle.¹”. The full citation goes in the matching footnote; later notes to the same source are shortened (author surname, ‘title’, and a cross-reference such as “n 4”).

In your reference list

The bibliography lists secondary sources alphabetically by the author’s surname, which is given first with un-stopped initials (“Kuhn TS”). Book and standalone titles are italicised; article, chapter and web-page titles take single quotation marks and title case. OSCOLA uses minimal punctuation, and bibliography entries carry no closing full stop.

OSCOLA tips
  • OSCOLA uses no full stops after initials — write “Donald M Thomson”, not “Donald M. Thomson”.
  • Footnotes give names in full, first name first; the bibliography inverts them to surname + initials (“Tulving E”).
  • For four or more authors, give the first author followed by “and others”.
  • Put the edition, publisher and year in one bracket with no comma before the year: “(3rd edn, Hart Publishing 2019)”.
  • A journal footnote cites only the first page of the article; add a pinpoint after it for a specific page.
  • This generator currently formats secondary sources (books, articles, chapters, reports, theses, websites); citing cases and legislation is coming soon.

Your reference list is empty. Build a citation above and choose “Add to list” to collect your sources here, correctly ordered and ready to copy or export.

The signature reference

Anatomy of an OSCOLA case citation

Legal writing leans on cases, so this is the citation OSCOLA is built around. Read it left to right: the parties, then the neutral citation that names the judgment, then the best law report, and finally a pinpoint to the paragraph you are relying on. Crucially, the whole thing lives in a numbered footnote — never in the body of your sentence.

Footnote 5 — as it appears at the foot of the page
A raised number in your text; the citation below it.
5Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, [2018] AC 61 [45].
Case name
Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union

Parties separated by a roman “v” (no full stop). The whole case name is set in italics in a footnote — and reverts to roman in the Table of Cases.

Neutral citation
[2017] UKSC 5

Year in square brackets, court abbreviation (UKSC = UK Supreme Court), then the judgment number. Neutral citations carry no page or volume — they identify the judgment itself.

Law report
[2018] AC 61

The best report follows the neutral citation: year, the report series abbreviation (AC = Appeal Cases) and the first page. Cite the most authoritative series available.

Pinpoint
[45]

A pinpoint to a numbered paragraph sits in square brackets at the very end. For older reports without paragraph numbers, pinpoint to a page instead.

Minimal punctuation
OSCOLA strips out punctuation wherever it can. There is no full stop in UKSC or AC, no comma between the neutral citation and the law report beyond the single comma shown, and no full stops after a judge’s or author’s initials. The footnote as a whole closes with a single full stop.

Neutral citation first

Where one exists (cases since 2001), the court-assigned neutral citation comes before any law report.

Best report follows

Add the most authoritative report — the Law Reports (AC, QB, Ch) outrank the WLR, which outranks the All ER.

Pinpoint the paragraph

Direct the reader to the exact paragraph with a number in square brackets, e.g. [45].

Footnotes, not in-text

How OSCOLA footnotes work

OSCOLA is a footnote style. You never put a citation in the body of your sentence — instead you place a superscript number after the relevant punctuation, and the full citation lives in the matching footnote at the foot of the page. Both cases and secondary sources are cited this way.

The marker goes after the full stop

Place the footnote number after the punctuation that closes the clause or sentence it supports — almost always after a full stop or comma.

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was reaffirmed.5

Each footnote ends with a full stop

Unlike a bibliography entry, every footnote is a complete sentence and closes with a full stop — whether it cites a case, a statute, a book or a journal article.

5 Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press 1996).
ibid

Use ibid when the very next footnote cites the same source as the one immediately above; add the new pinpoint after it, e.g. ibid [12].

(n 5)

For a source cited earlier but not directly above, give a short form with a cross-reference to the first footnote:Miller (n 5) [50].

First name in full

In a footnote an author’s name appears in full and in natural order (Thomas S Kuhn); the bibliography inverts it to Kuhn TS.

Footnotes vs in-text styles
If you have written in APA or Harvard before, this is the biggest adjustment: there are no parenthetical author–date markers in OSCOLA. Every source — primary or secondary — is introduced by a raised number and explained in full in its footnote.
Primary authority

Citing legislation in OSCOLA

Statutes and statutory instruments are the other half of OSCOLA's primary authorities. They follow tight, low-punctuation patterns — cite the Act by its short title and year, pinpoint to a section, and give statutory instruments by name, year and SI number.

Act of Parliament

Short Title Year

Cite the Act by its short title and year, in roman with no comma between them.

Human Rights Act 1998

Pinpoint to a section

…, s 1

Use s for section, sub-s for subsection and sch for schedule — no full stops.

Human Rights Act 1998, s 6(1)

Statutory instrument

Name Year, SI Year/Number

Give the SI’s name and year, then its serial number in the form SI 2020/1234.

The Tax Credits Regulations 2002, SI 2002/2006
The first time, the whole title
Give the Act’s full short title the first time you cite it. After that you may use a sensible short form (for example, HRA 1998) so long as you introduce it clearly. EU and international instruments have their own forms — check the OSCOLA quick reference guide for those.
What this generator covers

Secondary-sources cheat sheet

Books, journal articles, chapters, reports, theses and websites round out a legal bibliography — and these are exactly what the generator above formats for you. Each card gives the OSCOLA template and a worked example; an asterisk in a template marks an element that is set in italics.

Journal article

Template
Author, 'Title' (Year) Volume JournalName FirstPage
Example

Tulving E and Thomson DM, ‘Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory’ (1973) 80 Psychological Review 352

Book

Template
Author, *Title* (edn, Publisher Year)
Example

Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press 1996)

Book chapter

Template
Author, 'Chapter' in Editor (ed), *Book* (edn, Publisher Year)
Example

McGann JJ, ‘The Rationale of Hypertext’ in David C Greetham (ed), Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory (Oxford University Press 1997)

Website

Template
Author, 'Title' (Website Name, Year) <URL> accessed DD Month YYYY
Example

Cherry K, ‘How Human Memory Works’ (Verywell Mind, 2022) <https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000> accessed 15 January 2024

Newspaper article

Template
Author, 'Title' *Newspaper* (Day Month Year) <URL>
Example

Carrington D, ‘World Leaders Strike Landmark Climate Deal at COP26’ The Guardian (13 November 2021) <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal>

Online video

Template
Author, 'Title' (*Platform*, Day Month Year) <URL>
Example

Veritasium, ‘The Science of Thermodynamics’ (YouTube, 2 April 2020) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk>

Conference paper

Template
Author, 'Title' (*Conference*, Place Year)
Example

Vaswani A and Shazeer N, ‘Attention Is All You Need’ (Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA 2017)

Thesis / dissertation

Template
Author, 'Title' (ThesisType, Institution Year) <URL>
Example

Doe JA, ‘Essays on Monetary Policy and Inflation Expectations’ (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford 2019) <https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:example>

Report

Template
Organisation, *Title* (Number, Institution Year) <URL>
Example

World Health Organization, World Health Statistics 2023: Monitoring Health for the SDGs (No. 24, World Health Organization 2023) <https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323>

Books italic, articles in single quotes
The single most useful formatting rule for secondary sources: italicise a book title, but put an article or chapter title in single quotation marks and leave the journal name un-italicised. The generator applies all three automatically.
Get it right first time

Common OSCOLA mistakes

Most marks lost on OSCOLA come from over-punctuating or mixing it up with author–date habits. Here are the slips examiners flag most, each with the correction and the reason behind it.

Don’t write

Thomas S. Kuhn, …

Write

Thomas S Kuhn, …

Why: OSCOLA uses minimal punctuation and drops the full stop after a forename initial in the footnote name.

Don’t write

Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions …

Write

Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions …

Why: In the bibliography the surname comes first with un-stopped initials and no comma between family name and initials.

Don’t write

Tulving E and Thomson DM, 'Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory' (1973) …

Write

Tulving E and Thomson DM, ‘Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory’ (1973) …

Why: OSCOLA uses title case for article and chapter titles, and curly single quotation marks rather than double quotes.

Don’t write

… (1973) 80 *Psychological Review* 352

Write

… (1973) 80 Psychological Review 352

Why: The journal name is NOT italicised in OSCOLA — only books and other standalone works are set in italics.

Don’t write

Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Write

Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press 1996)

Why: The publisher and year sit together in one bracket with only a space — no comma — before the year.

Don’t write

… (1973) 80 Psychological Review 352–373

Write

… (1973) 80 Psychological Review 352

Why: A journal citation gives only the article’s first page; a pinpoint to a specific page is added separately in the footnote.

The back matter

Tables of Cases & Legislation, then your bibliography

A long OSCOLA piece — a dissertation or journal submission — ends with structured lists. A Table of Cases and a Table of Legislation come first, followed by a single bibliography of secondary sources alphabetised by author surname.

Table of Cases

Lists every case cited, alphabetically by the first party’s name. Case names appear in roman here (not italic), each with its citation.

Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the EU [2017] UKSC 5, [2018] AC 61

Table of Legislation

Lists statutes (and a separate sub-list of statutory instruments) cited in the work, ordered alphabetically by short title.

Human Rights Act 1998
Senior Courts Act 1981

Bibliography

One alphabetical list of secondary sources, surname-first with un-stopped initials and no closing full stop on any entry.

Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press 1996)

A sample OSCOLA reference list

#Bibliography entry (no closing full stop)
1Carrington D, ‘World Leaders Strike Landmark Climate Deal at COP26’ The Guardian (13 November 2021) <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal>
2Cherry K, ‘How Human Memory Works’ (Verywell Mind, 2022) <https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000> accessed 15 January 2024
3Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn, University of Chicago Press 1996)
4Tulving E and Thomson DM, ‘Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory’ (1973) 80 Psychological Review 352

Entries are alphabetised by the lead author’s surname and carry no full stop at the end — the one place OSCOLA deliberately differs from its footnotes.

Which edition this follows
This generator follows OSCOLA 4th edition (2012), the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities maintained by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. Its defining features are minimal punctuation (no full stops after initials), a footnote-with-bibliography system rather than author–date, books in italics versus article titles in single quotation marks, and publication details gathered in one bracket with no comma before the year. It covers the secondary sources you cite most; dedicated support for cases and legislation, OSCOLA’s primary authorities, is coming.

OSCOLA Referencing Generator — questions

Does this generator cite cases and legislation?+

Not yet. OSCOLA’s primary authorities — cases (with neutral citations and law-report references) and legislation (statutes and statutory instruments) — follow their own rules that sit outside this tool’s source model. The generator currently formats the secondary sources you cite alongside them: books, journal articles, book chapters, reports, theses and websites. Dedicated case and legislation support is coming; for now, format those primary sources by hand using the OSCOLA quick reference guide.

Which OSCOLA edition does this generator follow?+

It follows OSCOLA 4th edition (2012), the current standard for the secondary sources it covers. OSCOLA stands for the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, maintained by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford.

Why are there no full stops after initials in OSCOLA?+

OSCOLA uses minimal punctuation, so it drops the full stop after a forename initial: write “Donald M Thomson”, not “Donald M. Thomson”, and invert to “Thomson DM” (no stops) in the bibliography. This tool applies that convention automatically.

How do footnotes differ from the bibliography in OSCOLA?+

The footnote gives the author’s name in full and in natural order (“Thomas S Kuhn”) and ends with a full stop; it may add a pinpoint page after the citation. The bibliography inverts the lead author to surname-first with un-stopped initials (“Kuhn TS”), lists entries alphabetically, and carries no closing full stop. The generator produces both forms for every source.

When do I use “and others” in OSCOLA?+

When a source has four or more authors, give only the first author’s name followed by “and others” in both the footnote and the bibliography — for example, “Alice Adams and others”. For two or three authors, list them all, joined by “and” before the final name.

How do I format the publication details for a book?+

Put the edition, publisher and year inside one set of round brackets, separated by commas, with no comma before the year: “(3rd edn, Hart Publishing 2019)”. Note that OSCOLA abbreviates edition as “edn”, not “ed.”, and the book title itself is italicised.

How do I cite an online source in OSCOLA?+

After the title and any publication details, give the web address in angle brackets followed by the date you accessed it: “<https://example.com> accessed 15 January 2024”. The generator builds this tail automatically from the URL and access date you enter, and uses single quotation marks for a web-page or article title.

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