This set of guidelines has been put together as a support for contributing authors, aimed at achieving a coherent, unified, easily comprehensible magazine. We strongly recommend authors to follow these rules in order to achieve the format standards required by the Lawyr.it editorial team for the publication of articles.
Writing style
One of the aims of Lawyr.it is to offer articles that are accessible not just to professionals, but also to people outside the legal field. Therefore, we recommend using, as much as possible, plain English, rather than legal jargon. When the use of a certain specific legal term is imperative, please offer a clear explanation of it (e.g. Latin structures, purely legal notions). The language should be rather formal.
Try to avoid using extremely long and complex sentences, which are hard to follow. We recommend you to rather break your long sentences into shorter ones, using logical connectors. Given the strict word-count (1350-2500 words), when talking about specific articles from the laws, aim at analysing the content of the law and, unless extremely necessary, do not quote the text of the actual legal provision.
All articles that state an opinion or expose the author's perspective should be written in the first person singular (unless you are co-authoring it, case in which the first personal plural can be used). When other people's opinion are presented, the use of impersonal structures (properly referenced) is highly recommended (e.g. It is argued that, It is considered that, One could argue that).
Please also be politically correct. Do not use pejorative terms, use he/she (his/her) or they (their), rather than referring to just one of the sexes.
For consistency reasons, we also ask you to kindly use British English, not American English.
Writing format
We have conceived a set of format guidelines aimed at helping you to write a coherent and cohesive article:
- when referencing laws: Law number/year (e.g. Law 71/2011)
- when referencing cases: Court, Plaintiff v. Defendant, year (e.g. ECtHR, Letellier v. France, 1991)
- writing dates: Month Day, Year (e.g. February 12, 2013)
- capitalize the first letter of the words: Article (as in - Article 6), the Court, names of institutions and countries/nationalities
- when referring to people use the short forms: Mr., Ms., Mrs.
- when mentioning sums in RON please mention the corresponding sum in Euros as well – e.g. 10 RON (2 Euros)
- spell single-digit numbers: three, third (instead of “3”, “3rd”)
- for numbering paragraphs please use Arabic numbers and the following structure:
1.
1.1.
1.2.
1.2.1.
1.2.2.
2.
2.1.
2.2.
Also, do not forget to use the Harvard System of Referencing when mentioning the sources used for documentation.
Good luck with your article!
