References

What are references in Lawmaker?

Legislative provisions will often refer to other legislative provisions or legislative documents. Lawmaker can mark up these references in the document XML so that it can provide additional functionality to help while drafting and editing legislation but also to help downstream users when the legislation is published.

References are sometimes referred to as cross-references, or x-refs for short.

Two types of references can be marked up in Lawmaker:

Internal references - these are references to other provisions in the same document, e.g. “section 3(2)(a)” or “paragraph (3)”.
External references - these are references to provisions in other legislative documents or to the whole document, e.g. “section 5 of the Human Rights Act 1998”. In practice, external reference often appear as a provision reference only (e.g. “section 25”) and a wider reading of the context is required to determine that it is an external reference.

References are identified visually in the Editor using different formatting:

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.

Creating references

References can be created in two ways, using the Tag references feature (which tags both internal and external references) or by copying a reference to a provision via the structure view or the right-click context menu and pasting it into your document (for internal references only).

Working with references

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

The text within references can still 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 metadata associated with the reference going out-of-sync with the text displayed.

For internal references, you can:

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 underlying metadata and text via the Edit Reference dialog box.

For external references, you can:

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 underlying metadata and text via the Edit Reference dialog box.

How to “tag” references

Lawmaker can analyse text you have drafted and automatically add reference mark-up to the internal and external references it identifies.

You can trigger the Tag references feature in a number of ways:

Click on the Tag references icon in the toolbar,
Select Tools menu>Tag references,
Right-click in the Editor or Structure view and select Tag references, or
Use the keyboard short cut Alt+t.

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

What gets tagged?

By default, when you trigger the Tag references feature, Lawmaker will analyse the text in the provision (i.e. the section, regulation etc.) your cursor is in. If, however you have selected some provisions before triggering the feature, then all of those provisions will be analysed.

Internal references within Quoted structures will not be marked up because there may not be enough context within the quoted structure to reliably identify the target of the reference. Lawmaker will try and identify external references wherever they appear.

More on external references

To identify external references, Lawmaker relies on data about enacted legislation from www.legislation.gov.uk. Lawmaker can’t therefore identify references to legislation that has not yet been enacted or made. This also means that, if for some reason www.legislation.gov.uk is not available for a period of time, then Lawmaker will not be able to properly identify external references during that time but the Tag reference function will otherwise work as expected for internal references.

Lawmaker identifies and marks up both references to external provisions and to the documents containing those provisions. While sometimes references consist of both together, e.g. “section 12 of the Scotland Act 1998”, Lawmaker is also able to identify references to external provisions where the context determines that they relate to an enacted document rather than the document containing them. In particular, it will do this:

where an earlier provision sets the context, e.g. where a section begins “(1) The Human Rights Act 1998 is amended as follows.”,
where the opening words set the context, e.g. “In The Human Rights Act 1998-”,
where the reference refers back to a previously mentioned enactment, e.g. “section 7 of that Act”

Lawmaker will also identify external references that use an alias instead of the full title of the legislative document, e.g. references to “the 2007 Act” or “the 1998 Regulations”. It does this by searching for definitions of the alias elsewhere within the document, either of the form of a full definition like “the 2007 Act” means the Criminal Justice Act 2007” or a parenthetical definition like “…the Criminal Justice Act 2007(“the 2007 Act”)”.

Tagging provisions that already contain references

When you trigger the Tag reference feature on a provision that already contains some marked-up references, existing references are checked and re-tagged as necessary. References that have been marked as manually edited or to be ignored will not be touched when re-tagging.

Any existing internal references will be updated as an initial step of the re-tagging operation to ensure that the text of the references is up-to-date before it is re-tagged.

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.

The tag reference functionality relies on sophisticated pattern recognition and the data in www.legislation.gov.uk. Despite that, there may be some references that it doesn’t recognise. There is also a small possibility that Lawmaker will tag something as a reference when it isn’t. We’re constantly refining this feature so please provide feedback to Lawmaker Support if you come across any issues.

How to create a reference using the Structure View or the right-click context menu

Internal references can be created using the Structure View or via the context menu that is available when you right-click on text within your document. Using this method you first copy a reference to a particular provision and then you use the normal paste function to paste the reference where you want it in your document.

This method is the only way to create internal references within a quoted structure.

To insert a reference to a provision using this method:

Either:
1. Right-click on the provision in the Structure view you want to refer to (you may want to turn on full-depth mode to see all provisions - see Using the structure view), and select Select reference to copy from the menu that appears , or
2. Right-click within the provision in the main Editor window and select Select reference to copy from the context menu.
Select the reference in the form you want from the different options that are presented. Lawmaker will present all the possible options for referring to the provision so you can select whether or not you want the provision name (e.g. “section”) to be included and whether any ancestor provisions should be included in the reference.
If using the option via the right-click context menu in the Editor, click Copy in the dialog box.
The selected cross-reference will be put in the clipboard.
Place your cursor in the Editor where you would like the cross reference to be inserted and press Ctrl+v to paste in the reference.

In SI/SSIs, Lawmaker will determine whether a provision should be referred to in the reference as a “sub-paragraph” or “paragraph” depending on the provision’s context.

You can’t currently create references to EU provisions using this method.

Turning on the full-depth mode to see all provisions in the Structure View - especially in big documents - might have an impact on the Editor performance, slowing it down. Using the right-click context menu in the Editor will be faster and perform better.

Floating toolbar for references

To stop the accidental modification of the text of references (without the underlying metadata being updated if necessary), references are not directly editable in the editor (although you can delete a whole reference).

However, double-clicking on a reference will bring up a handy toolbar to access a range of reference-related features. All of these features (with the exception of Goto ref) are also available via the right-click context menu or from the main toolbar.

You can also paste over an existing cross reference. Pasting will strip out the old cross reference mark-up before inserting the new cross reference and its mark-up.

How to view the target of a reference

The Goto Ref button on the reference toolbar provides a quick way to navigate to and view the provision or document that a reference relates to.

For internal references, clicking on Goto Ref will move the focus of the editor window up or down until the provision that is targeted is visible.

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 renumber 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”.

You can update internal references that have previously been marked up in a number of ways:

Click on the Update references icon in the main toolbar,
Select Tools menu>Update references from the main toolbar,
Right-click in Structure view or Editor view and select Update references,
Click on the Update ref button on the references toolbar, or
Use the keyboard short cut Alt+u.

If nothing has been selected before you trigger the update then you’ll be given the option of updating references in the current provision (i.e. the current section, article, regulation etc.) or the whole document. Otherwise, Lawmaker will update all references in your selection.

Lawmaker will try and update both valid and invalid internal references [but not references that have been manually 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.

Tagging and updating references when editing a portion of the document

If you have a portion of a document open in the Editor (see Opening and editing a portion of document) and you use the Tag reference or Update reference feature, Lawmaker will detect when references in the portion do not point to other provisions within the portion and give you option to search the whole document rather than just the portion.

This will take longer than just searching the portion but will mean that references to other parts of the document are tagged and updated correctly instead of being marked as invalid references.

How to edit references

Although references cannot be directly modified in the editor, you can click on the Edit ref button on the reference toolbar, or select Edit reference from the right-click context menu, to bring up a dialog box allowing you to edit the text of the reference and its underlying metadata.

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 team.

How to ‘ignore’ references that have been tagged

If something has been erroneously marked up as a reference or misidentified as an external reference when it is an internal reference or vice versa, you can tell Lawmaker to ignore it in future. This will stop it trying to update the reference when you use the Update references feature or to re-tag it when you use the Tag references feature.

To ignore a reference, right-click within the reference and select Ignore reference.

(You can also get this feature from the upper toolbar by selecting Tools menu>Ignore reference or using the Ignore ref button on the reference toolbar. )

Any ignored reference will show up in the Editor as grey text with a dotted underline.

When a document is published on Lawmaker for external systems to access, the mark-up for ignored x-refs is removed.

How to remove (unwrap) tagged references

You can remove the reference mark-up that Lawmaker adds to a reference without deleting the text of the reference. You may want to do this, for example, if you want to update the text of the reference and then re-tag it. You may also want to remove existing reference tags because the text tagged isn’t a reference.

To do this, right-click within the cross-reference and select Remove reference tag.

(You can also do this from the upper toolbar, select Tools menu>Remove reference tag or with the Remove tag button on the reference toolbar.)

If you choose to remove the reference tags from one part of a compound reference (e.g. “sections 5 to 7 of the Police Act 2007”), Lawmaker will automatically remove the mark-up from all other parts at the same time.

Only the reference mark-up will be removed - the text will be left alone.

Showing j-refs as part of references

You can make the Editor and any PDF generated show the j-ref of target provisions within cross-references. See Managing J-refs for more about this.

Inserting and updating references between documents within Lawmaker

You can use the Structure View or context menu method to create a reference to a provision in another document in Lawmaker. That reference can be inserted into the document you are working on. This can be useful if you are working on a Bill or SI which has been split into a number of different documents or if you are drafting an amendment which contains references to provisions in the published Bill.

To create such a reference, open the other document, follow the steps above to copy the reference and then return to the document you are working on and press Ctrl+v to paste in the reference.

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

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.

Format of reference	Description	Notes
Purple text	Valid internal reference	The target provision has been identified and the citation should update correctly when you update x-refs.
Blue text	Valid external reference
Grey text with a light grey highlight	Invalid reference	An internal reference, the target of which cannot be found in the document (it may, however, exist in another document) or an external reference, the target document of which couldn’t be located on www.legislation.gov.uk.
Brown text	Reference requiring checking	A reference that has been modified as part of the Tag references operation that needs to be checked by the user to ensure it remains correct.
Double underlining	Manually edited reference	A reference the properties of which have been manually edited by the user and which will not be modified by any subsequent Tag references operation.
Black text with orange highlight	Internal reference which can’t be resolved	Lawmaker can find the target provision but is unable to update the reference text automatically. This is usually because the target provision has changed in some way, e.g. it has be promoted or demoted. To fix this, it is generally best to remove the existing reference and either re-tag the reference if it remains correct or insert a new reference.
Grey text with dotted grey underline	Ignored reference	The reference text of this cross-reference will not be updated as part of an Update references operation.