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What are references in Lawmaker?

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  • Valid internal references will show as purple , e.g. “section 3(2)(a)

  • External references will show as blue, e.g. “section 7 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2000

References that are invalid or have been manually altered are shown with different formatting which is described below in relation to specific features (the formatting is summarised below: under Table describing formatting of different references). The formatting in the editor is not replicated in the PDF version of the document but references will become hyperlinks in the PDF that can be used to jump to the target of the reference.

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Once created, references can be manipulated and modified using the right-click context menu, the toolbar menus or by the floating toolbar.

The Note that the text within references can still reference tags cannot be directly edited in the Editor but care should be taken in doing so. In a future release, the ability to edit text directly will be removed to reduce the risk of the . This is to reduce the risk of the metadata associated with the reference going out-of-sync with the text displayed.

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  • Update them, so that the text of the reference contains the up-to-date number of the provision which it refers

  • Remove the reference mark-up (but leave the text behind),

  • Mark a reference to be ignored which has previously incorrectly been marked up as a reference.

  • Make the Editor jump to the location of the target provision.

  • Show or hide j-refs within references.

  • Modify the displayed text and the underlying metadata and text via the Edit Reference dialog box.

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  • Remove the reference mark-up or mark it to be ignored (as you can with internal references)

  • Open a new tab in the browser containing the provision referred to as it appears on www.legislation.gov.uk.

  • For SI/SSIs only, add an automatically-generated legislative history footnote, derived from data on www.legislation.gov.uk.

  • Modify the displayed text and the underlying metadata and text via the Edit Reference dialog box.

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When the tag operation finishes, you will see all the references Lawmaker has identified highlighted in the Editor according to the table herebelow: Formatting of reference types. Internal and external references are, in particular, distinguishable from one another by their colour.

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Where however Lawmaker detects that the target of an existing reference has changed (e.g. because the context in which that reference sits has changed), the reference will be changed accordingly but it will be marked as requiring checking. Such references will appear brown in the Editor (e.g. “regulation 52”) and each one will also be highlighted with a document check error. From the document check panel, you can confirm that the reference remains valid or you can remove the reference mark-up if you think it is no longer appropriate.

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For external references, clicking on Goto Ref will open a new tab in the browser and will navigate to the target provision or document in www.legislation.gov.uk.

How to update internal references to reflect

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renumbering of provisions

The Update references feature enables you to update the number component within internal references to match the current number of the target provision. For example, if there is a reference to “section 5” but what was section 5 has been renumbered to section 7 then updating the reference will result in the reference changing to “section 7”.

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Lawmaker will try and update both valid and invalid internal references [ but not references that have been manually edited]marked as “manual” due to the metadata being edited. If Lawmaker can no longer find the target of a valid reference in the current document then it will change the reference’s status to invalid. Equally, if Lawmaker finds the target of an invalid reference then it will change the reference’s status to valid.

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This can be useful if you need to make a minor change the reference text, e.g. to adjust the capitalisation of the word “section”. However, any more significant changes to the text or other metadata fields should be done with care by expert users or in consultation with the Lawmaker support teamminor change the reference text, e.g. to adjust the capitalisation of the word “section”. However, any more significant changes to the text or other metadata fields should be done with care by expert users or in consultation with the Lawmaker support team.

Info

If you change any text field other than Reference text then the Status will automatically change to “Manual”. This means your changes will be preserved during any re-tagging operation but will also stop the Update references feature from operating on the reference. Changes to the the Reference text field will not impact on the Status and so will not stop Update references from working.

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How to ‘ignore’ references that have been tagged

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The reference will show up as valid when you first paste it in. However, when you update the cross-references in text, any reference to another document will show up as Invalid (grey highlighted text) and the reference won’t be updated. If at a future point the target provision is copied into the same document (or, in the case of an amendment, it is applied to the Bill), then the reference should return to being valid when you update the cross-references again.

Table describing formatting of different references
Anchor
reference-

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types
reference-

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types

This table lists the different formatting possibilities of references and what that means. Invalid references and references that require checking are also highlighted in the Document Checks panel.

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