order of signals

The order of signals refers to the order in which citation sentences should be arranged when immediately following each other. In formal legal writing , citation sentences should be arranged based on the signals that introduce them, in the following order of precedence:

• No signal
• E.g.,
• Accord
• See
• See also
• Cf.
• Compare with
• Contra
• But see
• But cf.
• See generally

All sources falling under the same signal should be put in a single citation sentence and separated by semicolons. Thus, each signal should appear only once in a given citation - at the start of its own citation sentence.

See Order of authorities (for the arrangement of sources within each signal).

[Last reviewed in July of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

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