The article begins with the premise that a citation is a return address. Its purpose is to permit the reader to locate the source that the writer consulted, and to verify that the source supports the proposition for which it is cited. Anything that obstructs that purpose is a defect of citation, however elegant the form.
Part I surveys the modern citation conventions — the Bluebook, the ALWD Guide, and the principal house styles of the federal courts — and reads each as an answer to the same question: how shall a reader return to the source? The conventions differ in vocabulary; they agree in purpose.
Part II takes up the hierarchy of authority. A citation that points to a paraphrase, when the original is available, is a citation that has stopped short. The article argues that the discipline of citing the controlling instrument — the constitution, the statute, the regulation, the rule, the opinion — is the discipline of reading the law as written.
Part III closes with the working habits of the citation editor: verification against the source, attention to subsequent history, and the recording of the edition consulted. The habits are humble; their cumulative effect is the integrity of the published record.