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Getting Started with OSCOLA

What OSCOLA is, how footnotes work, and the conventions that apply to every citation you write.

If you are studying law in the United Kingdom, you will almost certainly be asked to reference in OSCOLA — the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities. It is the house style of most UK law schools and of many journals and publishers.

OSCOLA is a footnote style. Superscript numbers in your text point the reader to footnotes at the bottom of the page, and those footnotes carry the citations. There are no in-text citations of the APA or Harvard kind.

This guide, and every guide on this site, follows the 5th edition of OSCOLA, published in December 2025.

How OSCOLA works

Legal writing in OSCOLA has three moving parts:

  • Superscript markers in the text, placed after the punctuation of the sentence they relate to.
  • Footnotes carrying the citations. Every footnote closes with a full stop.
  • For longer works, front matter: a table of cases, a table of legislation, and a bibliography of secondary sources (rr 1.6–1.7).

When one footnote cites several sources for the same point, separate them with semicolons and put sources of the same kind in chronological order (r 1.1.4). Cite legislation before cases, and primary sources before secondary ones.

Minimal punctuation

The most visible OSCOLA habit is what it leaves out (r 1.3.1). Abbreviations and initials take no full stops: the Weekly Law Reports are cited as WLR, the Director of Public Prosecutions as DPP, and an author called John Gareth Fleming appears as JG Fleming.

1Malcolm v DPP [2007] EWHC 363 (Admin), [2007] 1 WLR 1230.
Example
✗ Malcolm v. D.P.P. — full stops never appear in abbreviations.

Indicators

Indicators are the short words that tell your reader why a citation is there (r 1.1.5): ‘See also’ for an additional source, ‘cf’ to compare, ‘eg’ for an example, ‘ie’ for a restatement. They are never italicised, never capitalised (except ‘See also’ opening its own sentence), and never followed by punctuation.

When a footnote can be short

If the text already names the source, the footnote does not repeat it (r 1.1.1). A sentence discussing a case by name needs only the citation in the footnote; a sentence that quotes an Act and names the section may need no footnote at all.

31[2018] UKSC 4, [2018] AC 736.
Where the text says “In Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police …”
The case name is in the text, so the footnote starts at the citation.

Last reviewed 7 August 2026