{"id":1048,"date":"2020-09-25T15:27:45","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T15:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2021-12-11T18:11:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T18:11:18","slug":"how-many-words-is-a-citation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"How many words is a citation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and many state counterparts impose \u201cword limits\u201d on briefs and similar documents.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_32\">Rule 32(a)(7)(B)<\/a> requires that a principal brief contain no more than 13,000 words, a reply brief, no more than 6,500.&nbsp; Briefs that comply can exceed the respective page limits of 30 and 15.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_28.1\">Rule 28.1(e)(2)<\/a>\u2019s length limits for briefs filed in cross-appeals take the same form.&nbsp; An alternative measure, available only to briefs prepared with a monospaced typeface, is lines of text.&nbsp; While a brief\u2019s table of citations is excluded from those word-count caps, all of the citations in its body, including those contained in footnotes, are tallied.&nbsp; <em>See<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_32\">Rule 32(a)(7)(B)(f)<\/a>.&nbsp; The question explored here is: How are they counted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following citations are among those that appear in a brief randomly selected from U.S. Court of Appeals filings of this past June:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Clear Sky Car Wash LLC v. City of Chesapeake, Va.<\/em>, 743 F.3d 438 (4th Cir. 2014)<\/li><li><em>Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins<\/em>, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016)<\/li><li>10 U.S.C. \u00a7 1552(a)(5)<\/li><li>32 C.F.R. \u00a7 70.8<\/li><li>Department of Defense Directive 1332.28<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Each refers to a single source.  But how many words does each of those references add to the brief&#8217;s total?&nbsp; Is that sum affected by the citation format employed?&nbsp; Understand that this is no mere theoretical question.&nbsp; The attorney filing a brief must certify that it complies with the relevant word limit.&nbsp; More precisely, that certificate must \u201cstate the number of words\u201d contained in the brief.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_32\">Rule 32(g)(1)<\/a>.&nbsp; So to repeat the question:&nbsp; How many words do these five citations represent?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, few, if any, attorneys or their support staff grapple with that question in its raw form.&nbsp; That is because the federal rule and its state equivalents allow the person preparing the certificate to \u201crely on the word \u2026 count of the word-processing system used to prepare the document.\u201d&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_32\">Rule 32(g)(1)<\/a>.&nbsp; Set forth below are the figures Microsoft Word (2016)<a href=\"#footnote\">*<\/a> provides for each.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Clear Sky Car Wash LLC v. City of Chesapeake, Va.<\/em>, 743 F.3d 438 (4th Cir. 2014) <strong>(16 words)<\/strong><\/li><li><em>Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins<\/em>, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016) <strong>(9 words)<\/strong><\/li><li>10 U.S.C. \u00a7 1552(a)(5) <strong>(4 words)<\/strong><\/li><li>32 C.F.R. \u00a7 70.8 <strong>(4 words)<\/strong><\/li><li>Department of Defense Directive 1332.28 <strong>(5 words)<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Some straightforward observations follow from those figures.\u00a0 First, long case names expend words at a rate that bears no relation to their importance to a brief\u2019s argument.\u00a0 Second, the omission of a date element in the U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations citations\u2014a widespread professional practice but one not sanctioned by <em>The Bluebook<\/em> prior to the 2020 edition\u2014trims a word from each.\u00a0 Third, the absence of a parallel citation for <em>Spokeo<\/em> (\u201c194 L. Ed. 2d 635\u201d) has reduced that citation\u2019s word count by five.\u00a0 Why five?\u00a0 Because Microsoft Word woodenly treats every space as a word separator.\u00a0 Third, the use of short-form citations can dramatically reduce a brief\u2019s word count.\u00a0 Substituting DoDD for \u201cDepartment of Defense Directive,\u201d as this brief does after the first occurrence of the full phrase, trims 3 words off what would otherwise be the added word count every time a directive is cited.\u00a0 Finally, because of the treatment of spaces, citation format alone makes a difference. \u201cS. Ct.\u201d is counted as two words; \u201c4th Cir.\u201d is as well.\u00a0 MS Word sees \u201cL. Ed. 2d\u201d as three words.\u00a0 In a brief that makes repeated reference to a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, published in the Thomson West reporter, <em>Federal Supplement, Third Series, <\/em>the incremental word count created by the spaces in \u201cF. Supp. 3d\u201d and \u201cM.D. Fla.\u201d can begin to add up.\u00a0 If that important case has a long case name, as well, <em>e.g.<\/em>, <em>Wendel v. Fla. Dep\u2019t of Highway Safety &amp; Motor Vehicles<\/em>, 80 F. Supp. 3d 1297, 1302 (M.D. Fla. 2015) (MS Word count 19), each recurrence (not employing a short form) expends the equivalent of a sentence worth of words from a brief\u2019s allotted quota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Along come the editors of the freshly released twenty-first edition of <em>The Bluebook<\/em>.&nbsp; In light of this troubling counting algorithm embedded in MS Word, they grant leave to practitioners, although not law review authors or editors, to squeeze all spaces out of reporter names.&nbsp; Per <em>The Bluebook<\/em> (21st ed.) \u201cF. Supp. 3d\u201d can be written \u201cF.Supp.3d\u201d and \u201cS. Ct.\u201d as \u201cS.Ct.\u201d&nbsp; Alas, \u201cM.D. Fla.\u201d falls outside its meagre gesture of relief, and short-form citations remain the only remedy for wordy case names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>California attorneys have a clear advantage in this area.&nbsp; The California Rules of Court give them the option of citing in accordance with the <em>California Style Manual<\/em>.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.courts.ca.gov\/cms\/rules\/index.cfm?title=one&amp;linkid=rule1_200\">Cal. Rules of Ct. 1.200<\/a>. &nbsp;That manual\u2019s abbreviation format for both reporters and courts omits the spaces that <em>The Bluebook<\/em> requires.&nbsp; It compresses \u201cCal. App. 4th<sup>\u201d <\/sup>to \u201cCal.App.4th\u201d and does the same with abbreviations of deciding courts.&nbsp; The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is \u201cN.D.Cal.\u201d&nbsp; <em>See<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sdap.org\/downloads\/Style-Manual.pdf\"><em>California Style Manual<\/em><\/a> (2000).&nbsp; (California appellate briefs are also allowed 14,000 words.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.courts.ca.gov\/cms\/rules\/index.cfm?title=eight&amp;linkid=rule8_204\">Cal. Rules of Ct. 8.204<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the word count limits currently codified in appellate rules reflect a collective judgment on ample length for a citation-filled brief, any widespread shift in how attorneys format citations would be likely, in the end, to produce an adjustment of the cap. &nbsp;At present, only a very small percentage of briefs filed in federal court squeeze the spaces out of reporter names.&nbsp; The online legal research systems that allow one to retrieve a formatted citation along with text copied from an opinion insert the spaces called for by standard abbreviation practice, and format-checking software will look for them.  It seems likely that this option offered by the editors of <em>The Bluebook<\/em> will be grasped only in an emergency.&nbsp; It offers a way for the author of a brief confronting an imminent filing deadline with a word count slightly over the limit to trim without sacrificing content.&nbsp; With more time, the text could be tightened.&nbsp; If the length is a consequence of the complexity of the case, an order raising the cap is possible.&nbsp; <em>See<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/rules\/frap\/rule_32\"> Rule 32(a)(7)(B)(e)<\/a>.&nbsp; It\u2019s little surprise that this measure (the contemporary equivalent of reducing a paper\u2019s margins) occurred to a bunch of student journal editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"footnote\">*<\/a>Results on these and other word count matters vary with the word processing software employed.&nbsp; <em>See<\/em> Don Cruse, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotxblog.com\/writing\/worried-about-word-counts-your-choice-of-word-processor-matters-a-great-deal\/\">Worried about word counts? Your choice of word processor matters a great dea<\/a>l (2013).&nbsp; They also, apparently, depend on the software&#8217;s version.&nbsp; <em>See<\/em> <em>DeSilva v. DiLeonardi<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=4245800733629783762\">185 F.3d 815<\/a> (7th Cir. 1999).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and many state counterparts impose \u201cword limits\u201d on briefs and similar documents.&nbsp; Rule 32(a)(7)(B) requires that a principal brief contain no more than 13,000 words, a reply brief, no more than 6,500.&nbsp; Briefs that comply can exceed the respective page limits of 30 and 15.&nbsp; Rule 28.1(e)(2)\u2019s length limits [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12,43,19,10],"tags":[44,34,13,20,4],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bluebook","category-cases","category-federal","category-regulations","category-statutes-2","tag-abbreviations","tag-bluebook","tag-cases-2","tag-regulations-2","tag-statutes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}