Creating a Table of Authorities

In long legal documents, a table of authorities is often used to cite references to statutes, cases, and other sources for information referenced in the document. The table of authorities will cite the case or statute, along with the page number in the document on which the case or statute is referenced.

Word includes the ability to easily create a table of authorities. You do so by first marking citations within your document, and then instructing Word to compile the citations into your final table. As you are marking citations, you can specify both long and short versions of citations. For instance, a long citation may be something like "Smith v. Jones, 37 Adj. 3d 421 (1968)." The short version of the citation could be something like "Smith v. Jones" or even "Smith (1968)."

To mark citations, follow these steps:

1. Select the long, full citation you want to use.
2. Press Shift+Alt+I. Word displays the Mark Citation dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Make any editorial changes desired to the text in the Selected Text box.
4. Using the drop-down Category list, select the category to which this citation belongs.
5. In the Short Citation box, edit the text to reflect the short version of the citation.
6. Click on Mark (to mark just the current, selected instance of the citation) or Mark All (to search the document and mark all instances).
7. Click on Cancel.