A Bluebook legal-citation style for Zotero, adapted by Prof. Daniel Epps (Washington University School of Law) from the community Bluebook CSL style. (The file is a standard CSL 1.0 style, so it also works in other CSL-compatible processors like Pandoc or Mendeley — but Zotero is the intended and primary target, and the rest of this guide assumes Zotero.)
One CSL style file, installable in Zotero:
| Style | File | Install URL |
|---|---|---|
| Bluebook Style — Epps Version | BluebookDSEStyle.csl |
https://danepps.github.io/bluebook/BluebookDSEStyle.csl |
Note on signals. Bluebook introductory signals (See, See also, Cf., But see, etc.) are not produced by this style. They are inserted by a companion Zotero plug-in: danepps/zotero — install that alongside this style if you use signals.
Zotero is a free, open-source reference manager: it stores your sources (cases, articles, books, websites) in a personal library and lets you insert properly-formatted citations and bibliographies into Word, LibreOffice, or Google Docs at the click of a button. Most academic writers in law and the humanities use Zotero (or one of its commercial cousins like EndNote), and the Bluebook citation style this repo distributes plugs into Zotero to produce footnote-ready Bluebook cites.
If you don't have Zotero yet:
- Download Zotero from https://www.zotero.org/download/. The desktop app is the main piece — install it for your operating system.
- Install the browser connector (also linked from that page) — a small browser extension that grabs source metadata from Westlaw, Lexis, SSRN, journal sites, etc., and saves it into your Zotero library with one click.
- The Word / LibreOffice plug-in is bundled with the Zotero installer and gets set up automatically the first time you launch Zotero. (For Google Docs, the browser connector handles citation insertion.)
- Spend a few minutes with Zotero's Quick Start Guide — it covers adding sources, organizing them in collections, and inserting cites. Then come back here to install this Bluebook style.
Works with Zotero 7 through 10. (On Zotero 6 the style mostly works, but the Preprint item type doesn't exist — see the Preprint section below for the workaround.)
- Open Preferences → Cite → Styles.
- Click the + button in the lower left.
- In the file picker, paste one of the install URLs above into the filename field and press Enter.
- Alternative: download the
.cslfile to your desktop first (right-click the install URL → "Save Link As") and select it in the picker.
- Alternative: download the
- The new style appears in the list. Select it whenever you create a bibliography or insert citations.
The Zotero plug-ins for Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs pick up the style automatically — once installed in Zotero, choose it from the document-preferences dropdown. Zotero must be running in the background while you're inserting or editing citations from Word/Docs/LibreOffice; if Zotero is closed, the plug-in buttons do nothing.
Zotero only auto-updates styles installed from the official CSL repository. This style is not there — so updates are manual:
- Preferences → Cite → Styles.
- Select the existing "Bluebook Style — Epps Version" entry and click − to remove it.
- Re-install from the URL above.
If you care about knowing when to update, go to the GitHub repository and Watch it (top-right of that page → Watch → Custom → Releases). Each notable change is tagged, and you'll get an email.
See what changed between versions in the commit history or on the Releases page.
Early adopter migration note. If you installed an older version of this style (before the move to the GitHub Pages URL), your installed copy has a different internal
<id>than the current file. Trying to install the new one on top will produce a generic "unexpected error" in Zotero. To migrate: in Preferences → Cite → Styles, delete the existing "Bluebook Style — Epps Version" entry and then install the new file. One-time only — after that, updates show the normal "Update existing style?" prompt.
A few principles that apply across every item type. Read these once — they'll explain most "why is it doing that?" questions.
- No trailing period. Output ends without a final period. In a footnote, type the period yourself; inline, let the surrounding sentence punctuate. This is deliberate — law-review footnotes often chain multiple citations with semicolons, and the sentence-ending period belongs to the footnote, not to any single citation.
- Note-style, footnote-oriented. The style is built for law-review footnote citations, not inline author-date parentheticals. Insert citations with Zotero's "Insert Footnote" (in Word) or equivalent.
- Italics and small caps are rich-text formatting. The style emits italic / SMALL CAPS as styled-text attributes. Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs, and Pages render them correctly. Plain-text contexts (Markdown, terminal, some email clients) will show unformatted text.
- Short forms are automatic, based on citation position. The style looks at whether a citation is first or subsequent:
- Same source immediately prior →
*Id.*(with pincite:*Id.* at 495) - Later reference to a non-case →
AUTHOR, *supra* note N, at X - Later reference to a case → Rule 10.9 short form:
*Brown*, 347 U.S. at 495
- Same source immediately prior →
- The style renders what's in the data — it doesn't look anything up. If an output is wrong, check the Zotero fields on the item first. The style doesn't validate that
347 U.S. 483exists or that a journal volume makes sense — it simply formats whatever you typed. - Journal abbreviations come from each item's
Journal Abbrfield. The style reads the Bluebook-style abbreviation directly from the Journal Abbr field on the Zotero item (e.g.,Harv. L. Rev.,Yale L.J.,Stan. L. Rev.). You must fill this in on every journal article when you create the item — there is no central list, and the style does not compute it from the full journal name. Do not enable Zotero's MEDLINE abbreviation setting (Preferences → Cite) — MEDLINE uses a different abbreviation scheme (biomedical, no periods) that is not Bluebook-compliant. - Signals are handled by a separate plug-in. See, See also, Cf., But see, Contra, etc. are inserted by danepps/zotero — install that alongside this style if you cite with signals. You can type signals manually into the footnote text (or into Zotero's Prefix field) instead of using the plug-in, but there's a catch: Bluebook wants
id.lowercase when it follows a signal (See id.at 5, notSee Id.at 5). The style only knows to drop the capital when the signal is supplied through the plug-in or the Prefix field — a signal you type directly into the Word document leaves the style thinkingId.starts a new sentence, and it will be capitalized. Using the plug-in (or, failing that, the Prefix field) is the only way to get signal-then-id.rendered correctly. - Short Title controls the short form. For books, articles, and cases, the Zotero Short Title field (or the CSL
title-shortvariable) determines how the shortened name appears in subsequent citations. Fill it in for cleaner supra and short-form cites. - Explanatory parentheticals go in manually, per cite. Bluebook often wants a parenthetical after a source (e.g.,
(holding that ...),(noting that ...),(per curiam)). This style doesn't generate those — type them by hand directly into the footnote text, after the citation, rather than trying to stuff them into Zotero's Suffix field. In a string cite where each source has its own parenthetical, it's easiest to insert each source as its own separate citation rather than combining them into one multi-source cite — that way you can type each parenthetical between the inserted cites, and semicolons and signals stay easy to control.
These aren't disagreements with the Bluebook — they're tweaks to the underlying CSL to make it render more cleanly in practice.
- No trailing period. The base style emits a period at the end of each citation. That interferes with chained footnote cites (where multiple sources are joined with semicolons, and the period belongs to the footnote sentence, not to any single cite). This style drops the trailing period and expects you to add it in context.
et al.at 5 authors, not 3. A personal preference of the author — the 3-author threshold produces a lot ofX et al.in footnotes where spelling out all three would read better.
Bluebook requires different output for different kinds of sources. The style renders based on the Zotero Item Type and a few specific fields. Below is a type-by-type guide.
Conventions in the tables below:
- italic = should appear italicized in output; SMALL CAPS = should appear in small caps.
- 🔴 = required for a correct citation — leave it blank and the output will be broken or missing a piece.
- ⚪ = optional — the field adds detail or triggers an alternate rendering, but can be left blank.
| Zotero field | Example | Renders as | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Item Type | Journal Article |
||
| 🔴 | Author | Jane Doe |
Jane Doe |
| 🔴 | Title | Why the Bluebook |
Why the Bluebook |
| 🔴 | Publication | Harvard Law Review |
(full name — used as a fallback if Journal Abbr is blank) |
| 🔴 | Journal Abbr | Harv. L. Rev. |
Harv. L. Rev. (small caps) |
| 🔴 | Volume | 137 |
137 |
| 🔴 | Pages | 101 |
used as first page |
| 🔴 | Date | 2024 |
(2024) |
Typical output: Jane Doe, *Why the Bluebook*, 137 Harv. L. Rev. 101 (2024).
Use Item Type Journal Article exactly as above, plus add a status line to the Extra field:
status: forthcoming
🔴 The status: line is what triggers the forthcoming rendering. ⚪ Fill in URL with the SSRN or repository link — it will now be rendered (URLs are otherwise suppressed for normal journal articles). Volume and Pages become optional in this mode. The style will render:
Jane Doe, *Why the Bluebook*, 137 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027), https://papers.ssrn.com/...
You can also write status: accepted, status: in press, etc. — whatever you type in status appears verbatim inside the parenthetical.
Pincites on forthcoming articles render as (manuscript at N). Because the journal's printed pagination doesn't exist yet, the pincite refers to the page of the draft manuscript instead of the (nonexistent) journal page. The style emits this automatically — you just enter the pincite as the citation locator the same way you would for any other source. Example with a pincite:
Jane Doe, *Why the Bluebook*, 137 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027) (manuscript at 12), https://papers.ssrn.com/...
Subsequent (supra) cites of a forthcoming article use the same form: Doe, *supra* note 3 (manuscript at 12) rather than Doe, *supra* note 3, at 12. As soon as the article is no longer forthcoming, remove the status: line from Extra and pincites revert to ordinary at N rendering.
Some journal articles carry a designation — Note, Comment, Recent Development, Essay, etc. — that Bluebook requires between the author and the title. Add it via the Extra field:
genre: Note
The style inserts it automatically and title-cases it regardless of how you type it (note, NOTE, and Note all render as Note).
Typical output: Jane Doe, Note, *The Fourth Amendment's Third Way*, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1627 (2007).
For anonymous student notes (no author listed), leave the Author field blank and set genre: Note. The short-cite form will use the italicized short title as the supra anchor — fill in Zotero's Short Title field if you want a trimmed version:
- First cite:
Note, *The Fourth Amendment's Third Way*, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1627 (2007). - Short cite: The Fourth Amendment's Third Way, supra note 3, at 1630.
For a paper formally part of a numbered working-paper series — NBER, Columbia Public Law, university working-paper series, etc. Use Item Type Preprint (CSL article). Preprint was introduced in Zotero 7 and is present in Zotero 8; on Zotero 6 it doesn't exist — use the workflow-by-overrides note at the bottom of this section.
Recommended fields:
| Field | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| 🔴 | Author | Alan J. Auerbach |
| 🔴 | Title | National Savings, Economic Welfare… |
| 🔴 | Repository | Nat'l Bureau of Econ. Rsch. (the sponsoring institution) |
| 🔴 | Genre | Working Paper (or Discussion Paper, NBER Working Paper, etc.) |
| 🔴 | Series Number | 729 |
| 🔴 | Date | 1981 |
| ⚪ | URL | SSRN/NBER link |
Output: Alan J. Auerbach, *National Savings…* (Nat'l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 729, 1981), https://...
Trigger: Series Number is the signal that says "this is a numbered working paper, render it under Rule 17.4." Without a Series Number, the style falls back to the unpublished-manuscript form (Rule 17.2.1) — at which point you should usually switch to the Manuscript item type instead (see Unpublished manuscript below).
Field fallbacks (for when your Zotero version, translator, or muscle memory landed the data in a different field, the style reads each slot through a priority chain):
| Slot | Priority chain |
|---|---|
| Sponsoring org | publisher (via Extra: publisher: NBER) → Repository → Series (only when Genre is also set, so Series isn't doing double duty) |
| Descriptor (e.g., "Working Paper") | Genre → Series (when Genre is empty) |
| Paper number | number (via Extra: number: 729) → Series Number |
So if you populate Genre + Series + Series Number (Repository empty), the style still produces (Series, Genre No. Number, Year) — Series fills the sponsor slot because Genre is occupying the descriptor. Only when both Genre and Repository are empty does Series collapse back to descriptor duty.
Zotero 6 workaround. If you're on a version without the Preprint type, use Item Type
Documentand putpublisher: <sponsor>,genre: Working Paper, andnumber: <N>in the Extra field. Output is the same.
Not sure which type to use for a draft?
- Paper placed with a journal (even just accepted)? → Journal Article with
status: forthcoming(see Forthcoming journal article above).- Paper part of a numbered working-paper series (NBER WP No. 729, etc.)? → Preprint, this section.
- Bare unpublished draft, on SSRN or in a drawer, no series, no journal? → Manuscript, see next section.
For unpublished work that isn't part of a numbered series and isn't placed with a journal — bare SSRN drafts, in-progress papers, student notes/comments not selected for publication, conference drafts on file with the author. Item Type Manuscript. Renders in roman type (no italics, no small-caps) per Rule 17.2.
| Field | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| 🔴 | Item Type | Manuscript |
| 🔴 | Author | Anatoliy Bizhko |
| 🔴 | Title | Capitalism and Democracy |
| 🔴 | Date | 2000-02-29 (most precise writing date available) |
| ⚪ | Manuscript Type | comment, note, dissertation, etc. — defaults to manuscript |
| ⚪ | Archive | location string — author, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law, etc. (just the location, the style adds on file with) |
| ⚪ | URL | SSRN/repository link |
Output: Anatoliy Bizhko, Capitalism and Democracy 25 (Feb. 29, 2000) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with author).
With a Manuscript Type set: Victoria E. Anderson, Company Outing… 12 (Mar. 15, 2004) (unpublished comment) (on file with the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law).
With a URL (SSRN draft): Jane Doe, Some Paper Title 12 (Mar. 15, 2024) (unpublished manuscript), https://ssrn.com/abstract=12345.
Genre / Manuscript Type renders lowercased to match Bluebook examples —
(unpublished comment), not(unpublished Comment). Socomment,Comment, andCOMMENTall produce the same output.
Item Type Newspaper Article. 🔴 Required: Author, Title, Publication, Date. The style switches form based on whether Pages and/or URL are filled:
| Has Pages? | Has URL? | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | No | Author, *Title*, Paper, Date, at A1. |
| No | Yes | Author, *Title*, Paper (Date), https://... |
| Yes | Yes | Author, *Title*, Paper, Date, at A1, https://... |
| No | No | Author, *Title*, Paper, Date. |
Same rules as newspaper (Item Type Magazine Article).
Item Type Web Page.
| Field | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| 🔴 | Website Title | renders as the italic container name, e.g., Divided Argument |
| 🔴 | Title | the specific page/post title (italic) |
| 🔴 | URL | the page's address |
| ⚪ | Date | publication date |
| ⚪ | Accessed | fill this to add (last visited Mon. D, YYYY) — only Webpages get "last visited" |
Output with Accessed: Author, *Page Title*, *Website Title* (Jan. 27, 2025), https://... (last visited Apr. 10, 2026).
Item Type Blog Post (CSL post-weblog). Like a webpage, but the style does not add "last visited" (blog posts carry their own publication date). 🔴 Required: Author, Title, Blog Title, URL, Date.
Item Type Book. Author and title render in small caps per Rule 15. 🔴 Required: Author, Title, Date. ⚪ Edition, Editor/Translator (added to parenthetical if present).
Output: JANE DOE, THE TREATISE 101 (2024).
Item Type Book Section (Zotero) maps to CSL chapter. 🔴 Required: Author, Title (chapter), Book Title, Date. ⚪ Editor (adds the ed. parenthetical).
Output: Jane Doe, *Chapter Title*, in SOME EDITED VOLUME 101 (Bob Smith ed., 2024).
Item Type Case.
| Field | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| 🔴 | Case Name | Brown v. Board of Education |
| 🔴 | Reporter | U.S. |
| 🔴 | Reporter Volume | 347 |
| 🔴 | First Page | 483 |
| ⚪ | Court | (leave blank for U.S. Supreme Court; otherwise court name) |
| 🔴 | Date Decided | 1954 |
First citation: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Short-form citation (Rule 10.9, used automatically on subsequent references): *Brown*, 347 U.S. at 495.
Immediately-subsequent citation renders as *Id.* at 495.
Fill the Short Title field on the case (e.g.,
Brown) to control how the short name appears.
Cases aren't the style's strong suit. Bluebook's Rule 10.9 "five-footnote rule" — use a short form only if the full cite appears in the same footnote or one of the preceding five footnotes, otherwise re-cite in full — cannot be implemented in CSL, because the style has no way to count footnote distance (see the known limitation below). The style will short-form every subsequent case cite, even ones that are 30 footnotes downstream. The author typically enters cases and case short forms manually in the footnote text rather than through Zotero, and that is a reasonable workflow if precise case-citation behavior matters to you.
For commission reports, GAO/CRS reports, agency reports, and other institutional reports treated as books in Bluebook. Item Type Report. Author and title render in small caps.
| Field | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| 🔴 | Item Type | Report |
| 🔴 | Author | U.S. Dep't of Justice (or a personal author, see below) |
| 🔴 | Title | Annual Report |
| 🔴 | Date | 2024 |
| ⚪ | Institution | optional second institutional name (see below) |
Pure institutional report (no personal author): put the institution in the Author field as a single-name author. Output: U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, ANNUAL REPORT 12 (2024).
Report with both a personal author and an institutional sponsor: put the personal author in Author and the institutional name in Institution. Both render small-caps before the title:
JOHN DOE, U.S. GEN. ACCT. OFF., REPORT TITLE 12 (1986).
Don't use Report for working papers. Despite both being "reports" in plain English, Bluebook 15.7 (book-style institutional reports) and Bluebook 17.4 (working papers) render very differently. Use Item Type Preprint for numbered working papers — see the Working paper section above.
These use Zotero's Statute / Bill / Regulation item types. They're currently passed through generic rendering — heavy statute users should double-check output; open an issue if a specific format is off.
Zotero's Extra field lets you override or add CSL variables that aren't in the normal Zotero form. Use key: value, one per line.
| Line in Extra | What it does |
|---|---|
status: forthcoming |
Renders (forthcoming YYYY) on journal articles and preprints; also enables URL rendering |
status: accepted |
Same mechanism, different word |
genre: Note |
Inserts article-type designation between author and title on journal articles (Note, Comment, Recent Development, etc.) |
event-title: ... |
Override conference/event title |
number-of-pages: ... |
For books |
Lowercase keys are the convention; Zotero's parser is actually case-insensitive, so Status: forthcoming works too. Whitespace around the colon is tolerated.
| Situation | Output |
|---|---|
| Immediately after the same source | *Id.* (or *Id.* at 495 with a pincite) |
| Later reference to a non-case | AUTHOR, supra note N, at X |
| Later reference to a case | *Brown*, 347 U.S. at 495 |
| 5 or more authors | First Author et al. |
- No auto-update. Zotero only auto-updates styles from its official repository. Reinstall manually when new versions ship (see above).
- No introductory signals. See, Cf., But see, etc. are produced by a separate Zotero plug-in, not this style.
- Limited statute / regulation coverage. The style is primarily tuned for cases, books, journal articles, working papers, and internet sources.
- Bibliography rendering is approximate. The style targets law-review footnotes (note-style). If you ask Zotero to build a bibliography/works-cited list, it will produce something reasonable but not a Bluebook Table of Authorities.
- No
[hereinafter shortname]support. Bluebook lets authors coin a custom short form on first citation (e.g.,[hereinafter Reimagining]) and then use that short form on every subsequent cite. CSL has no native concept of author-defined short forms, so the style can't generate the[hereinafter …]marker or honor it on subsequent cites. - Can't detect "volume number is a year." When a journal's volume is a year (e.g.,
2024 Wis. L. Rev. 501), Bluebook suppresses the redundant trailing(2024). This style renders both (2024 Wis. L. Rev. 501 (2024)), because CSL can't introspect the volume to tell whether it looks like a year. - Can't detect "title ends in a numeral." When a book or report title ends in a number (e.g., Article III at 45), Bluebook requires the pincite be written
, at 45to avoid running the two numbers together. This style just emits the page number, so you may get ambiguous output likeARTICLE III 45. - Cases: no five-footnote rule. Bluebook Rule 10.9 says a short-form case cite (
*Brown*, 347 U.S. at 495) may be used only if the full cite appears in the same footnote or one of the preceding five footnotes — otherwise, cite in full again. CSL has no notion of footnote distance, so this style will short-form every subsequent case cite, no matter how far back the full cite was. For precise case-citation behavior, many authors (including this one) enter cases and case short forms manually in the footnote text rather than via Zotero.
Coming later. Several of these gaps (hereinafter, volume-as-year, title-ends-in-numeral) are on the roadmap for the companion Zotero plug-in — see danepps/zotero. The plug-in can introspect the data and post-process citation output in ways that a pure CSL file cannot.
- Working papers (Bluebook Rule 17.4) now have first-class support via Item Type
Preprint(CSLarticle). Output:Author, *Title* pincite (Sponsor, Working Paper No. N, YYYY)plus URL. Reads sponsor / descriptor / number through a fallback chain (Repository / Genre / Series Number preferred; Series fills the sponsor slot when Genre is set; Extra-field overrides supported). See Working paper above. - Unpublished manuscripts (Rule 17.2.1) now render properly via Item Type
Manuscript. Output:Author, Title pincite (Mon. DD, YYYY) (unpublished {type|"manuscript"}) (on file with X)— all roman per Rule 17.2. Includes URL. See Unpublished manuscript above. - Institutional reports (Rule 15.7) with both a personal author and an institutional sponsor now render both in small-caps before the title (
JOHN DOE, U.S. GEN. ACCT. OFF., REPORT TITLE 12 (1986)). Item TypeReportis reserved exclusively for true Rule 15.7 reports — working papers moved off it. - The earlier hybrid
reportrendering that conflated working papers and institutional reports is removed.
- Forthcoming journal articles now use
(manuscript at N)for the pincite on both first-cite andsuprashort-cite, whenstatus: forthcoming(or any non-emptystatus) is set in Extra. SoJane Doe, *Title*, 137 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027) (manuscript at 12)and the correspondingDoe, *supra* note 3 (manuscript at 12). - URL emission enabled for forthcoming journal articles.
- Genre designation for student notes / comments / etc. on journal articles (Extra:
genre: Note); rendered title-cased between author and title. - Legislation support (statutes, bills, regulations) graduated from experimental.
- Various small fixes — Oxford-comma-before-ampersand in author lists, anonymous-article handling,
<bibliography>element added.
Email Prof. Epps at epps@wustl.edu.
When reporting a bad render, paste the output you got, the output you expected, and (if possible) a screenshot of the Zotero item so the fields can be verified.
- Original Bluebook CSL by Bruce D'Arcus and Nancy Sims, with contributions from Patrick O'Brien.
- Modifications for this fork by Dan Epps (epps@wustl.edu).
- Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.