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Books, Chapters and Encyclopedias

Authored and edited books, chapters, older works, books of authority, encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Authored books

Author (exactly as the book gives the name), a comma, the title in italics, then the publication details in brackets: any edition, then publisher and year with no punctuation between them (r 3.2.1). Anything with an ISBN cites as a book.

Author, Title (0th edn, Publisher year) pinpoint.

1JG Fleming, The Law of Torts (9th edn, LBC 1998).
2Adrian Briggs, Agreements on Jurisdiction and Choice of Law (OUP 2008) para 4.51.
3Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (first published 1651, Penguin 1985) 268.

Editors and translators

A work with no author cites its editor or translator with (ed) or (trs) after the name; an authored work credits an acknowledged editor or translator at the start of the brackets (r 3.2.3).

1Hugh Beale (ed), Chitty on Contracts (36th edn, Sweet & Maxwell 2025) para 44.002.
2K Zweigert and H Kötz, An Introduction to Comparative Law (Tony Weir tr, 3rd edn, OUP 1998).

Chapters in edited books

The chapter author and quoted title, then ‘in’, the editors with (eds), the book title in italics, and the publication details. The start page of the chapter is not given (r 3.2.4).

1John Cartwright, ‘The Fiction of the “Reasonable Man”’ in AG Castermans and others (eds), Ex Libris Hans Nieuwenhuis (Kluwer 2009).

Books of authority, encyclopedias, dictionaries

The old books of authority keep their conventional abbreviated forms (r 3.2.6, table at r 5.2.3). Encyclopedias cite without author or publisher, with edition and year of issue (r 3.2.7); dictionaries quote the entry and italicise the dictionary (r 3.2.8).

13 Bl Comm 264.
2Halsbury’s Laws (5th edn, 2010) vol 57, para 53.
3‘no-fault compensation’, Oxford Dictionary of Law (10th edn, OUP 2022).

Related Index entries

BookEdited or translated bookChapter in an edited bookBook of authorityEncyclopediaDictionary entry

Last reviewed 7 August 2026