Quoted structures

Introduction

A quoted structure is the element you insert in Lawmaker to contain inserted or substituted provisions when you are creating a textual amendment in a Bill or SI, or creating a parliamentary amendment.

A quoted structure can contain any kind of provision and will normally appeared indented on the page and surrounded by quote marks. In the Editor a quoted structure will be shown with a dotted line around it to distinguish from other provisions.

(They’re called “quoted structures” because <quotedStructure> is the name of the element used in Akoma Ntoso to hold structured content that is being quoted in some way from another document. They are similar to what, in the existing SI template, were called “long quotes”)

How to insert a quoted structure

Use any of the following methods:
- right-click in the Editor and select Insert quoted structure
- from the Insert menu in the toolbar, select Insert quoted structure
- use keyboard shortcut CTRL+q
Select a starting element and adjust any other settings in the dialogue box.
Click Insert.

Lawmaker will insert a quoted structure containing the selected starting element on a new line below the provision your cursor is in,.

Setting the properties of a quoted structure

When you insert a quoted structure you can set various properties of the the quoted structure. Some of these can be updated after the quoted structure is inserted by right-clicking within the quoted structure and selecting Update quoted structure properties (You can also do the same using the Insert menu in the toolbar.)

Document type

(Can’t be changed after quoted structure is inserted.)

Select the

Starting element

(Can’t be changed after quoted structure is inserted.)

Indent level

The main purpose of indent levels in the quoted structure properties, is to increase the indent of the overall quoted structure for occasions when you are inserting a textual amendment which is itself already within a quoted structure in the target document. The indent level will be applied globally to that quoted structure so that all provisions inserted within it will have the indent level applied. This indent level is in addition to the single, global indent applied to quoted structures which is represented by the ‘none’ option in the Indent level option.

Start quote and end quote

If a quoted structure is to be surrounded by quote marks, you should select them here.

By default, a quoted structure will be set to have double inverted commas “ and “ except in the case of a Scottish Parliament amendment which uses < and >.

In the Editor, the quote marks will be shown outside the box around the quoted structure content but in the PDF they will be displayed correctly.

Avoid setting the quote marks to none and then inserting the quote marks directly within the content of the quoted structure. That can cause problems with numbering and formatting elsewhere.

Following text

Enter here any text that you want to appear directly after the closing quote mark. This will usually be punctuation and/or a conjunction, e.g. “;” or “, and”.

It is easier to enter it here rather than trying to add this text in the Editor. Doing so will also guarantee that the text is placed in the correct element will display correctly in the PDF.

Inserting a quoted structure immediately after another quoted structure

With your cursor placed in the quoted structure you want the adjacent quoted structure to appear after:

right-click in the Editor view or Structure view and select ‘Insert adjacent quoted structure’, or
From the upper toolbar, select ‘Insert > Insert adjacent quoted structure’

In the ‘insert quoted structure’ modal:

Select the starting element for the new adjacent quoted structure
Specify the necessary indent level to apply to the adjacent quoted structure
Select whether you require a starting and ending quotation mark
Update the following text if required
And click Insert

The system will insert the adjacent quoted structure immediately after the one where your cursor was containing the selected starting element

Continue drafting your quoted structure

Nested quoted structures

It is possible to insert a quoted structure within an existing quoted structure. Just place your cursor within the existing quoted structure and follow the instructions above to insert a new quoted structure.

Changing the document type will change the starting element list according to elements in the selected document type.
If you select a quoted structure for a different document type, the PDF will render the elements in the correct styles for the target document, but will match the font sizes for text to the document it has been inserted within so that it looks and reads better.

See ‘Annex 13 – Default indent for starting provisions within a quoted structure’ for a guide on the default indents applied to starting provisions in quoted structures

You can insert a table/table row as a starting element by selecting “table” as the starting element. This will take you to the “Insert table” dialogue box allowing you to specify the type of table/table row that you want to insert.

You can copy, cut and paste quoted structures by placing your cursor in the quoted structure and selecting “quoted structure” from the breadcrumb. To paste it, place your cursor in the provision/amendment you want your quoted structure to appear after and use the keyboard short cut Ctrl + v

If the starting element was a numbered element, the number will be locked so that renumbering won’t affect it. The number will be empty by default (with parentheses if the number has them) and will need updating accordingly. The lock only affects renumbering.

The indent level in the ‘insert quoted structure’ modal will be applied to all provisions in the quoted structure and was predominantly designed to be used when quoting text from another document that is itself in a quoted structure – in which case you would select indent level 1.

There is a -1 indent level option which will present the contents of the quoted structure set to full page width – useful for large tables.

If you can’t find an element in the insert menu once you’ve inserted a quoted structure you will need to insert an adjacent quoted structure and select the provision from the ‘starting provision’ option in the ‘insert quoted structure’ modal. Adjacent quoted structures will blend into the current quoted structure in terms of display in the PDF, you just need to ensure the start and end quote appear at the start of your quoted structure (if required) and that your end quote appears after your last adjacent quoted structure.

You can select European Legislation which will provide a list of EU provisions correctly styled in the quoted structure although it’s not possible to create manual cross references to these provisions using the structure view at this current time.

If you are inserting a quoted structure in an amendment, the default start and end quotes will be the appropriate symbols for the document type, so for Scottish Parliament amendments, they will be greater than/less than angle brackets by default

Use backspace to delete the value in the starting element’s num if it is supposed to be empty. Empty placeholders show up as grey boxes in the Editor, but they do not show in the PDF rendition.

For empty numbers with brackets e.g. paragraph (a), leave a space between the brackets