The Bluebook covers some other preliminary matters before delving into citation conventions. Be sure to review these sections in the Whitepages for a general overview.
In academic pieces, such as law review articles, four typefaces are generally used: ordinary, underscoring, italics, and Large and Small Caps. See R2. However, law reviews utilize two sets of typeface conventions: one for main text or footnote text (R2.2) and one for citations (R2.1).
Typeface for Law Review Main Text
The main text of a law review article will not contain citations, and it uses only ordinary type and italics. Most of the text will appear in ordinary type. However, case names (including the “v.” and procedural phrases) and titles of articles, publications, or speeches will be italicized. Additionally, italics may be used for emphasis in the text or in original quoted material.
Typeface for Law Review Footnote Text
If a sentence in the footnote text contains citations, the sentence will be placed in citation clauses embedded in the sentence. See R1.1(b). When a case name is part of a sentence grammatically, it should be italicized. The following example is illustrative of this point.
One noteworthy pre-Brown case was Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S 1 (1948), which held unconstitutional state judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants.
If the case name is not part of the sentence grammatically but is used as a citation that is embedded in the footnote text, then follow the typeface convention for citations set forth in R2.1(a). The following example is illustrative of this point.
As the Seventh Circuit observed: “Lincoln Green will not be a high-rise development, but merely a cluster of two-story townhouses no higher than the surrounding single family homes.” Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp. v. Vill. of Arlington Heights, 517 F.2d 409, 415 (7th Cir. 1975), rev’d on other grounds, 429 U.S. 252 (1977).
The Whitepages provide conventions for citations (R2.1) and textual materials (R2.2). Note the following general principles regarding case names, books, periodicals, introductory signals, and punctuation.
Case Names
Ordinary plain text should be used for case names in full citations, except for procedural phrases like ex rel., which are italicized. The following examples appear in R2.1(a), p. 69:
However, use italics for the short form of case citations.
Books
Large and small capitals are used for book authors and titles. See R2.1(b), p. 69.
Periodicals
This is unwieldy. The author's name is in ordinary type, the article title is italicized, and the periodical name is in large and small caps. See R2.2(c), p. 69.
Introductory Signals
All introductory signals should be in italics when they appear within citation sentences or clauses. The following examples appear in R2.1(d), pp. 69-70:
Punctuation
Commas, semicolons, and other punctuation marks should only be in italics when they are part of the italicized material, not when they are simply elements of the sentence or citation in which they appear. The following examples appear in R2.1(f), p. 70:
There will be instances when two rules (or more) will be applied in a footnote. The following example demonstrates how to format case names when a case name appears within an article title in a citation (R2.1(a), when a case name is grammatically part of the sentence in which it appears (R2.2(b)(i).
University of Virginia Law Professor Kim Forde-Mazuri’s grudging reaction to Obergefell illustrates this tendency. Kim Forde-Mazuri, Calling Out Heterosexual Supremacy: If Obergefell Had Been More Like Loving and Less Like Brown, 25 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 281 (2018).