How this builder assembles a citation
The builder is deterministic. It takes the metadata you type into the form, selects the template that matches the source type you chose, and joins your values with fixed separators in a fixed order. The same inputs always produce the same output, on any device, with no randomness and no ranking of alternatives.
Nothing is fetched, looked up or inferred. There is no artificial intelligence in this tool, no scraping of court or publisher databases, no authority lookup and no attempt to complete a field you left blank. If a field the template expects is empty, the builder raises a warning beside the output instead of inventing a plausible value. A citation assembled from partial metadata is still incomplete metadata, arranged neatly.
The three stages
- Collection. Only the fields belonging to the selected source type are read. Switching type changes which fields the template consumes.
- Normalization. Surrounding whitespace is trimmed and author or editor entries you separated with semicolons or new lines are split into a list. Your wording, spelling, capitalization and accents are preserved exactly.
- Assembly. Values are placed into the template, the anatomy breakdown shows which field became which segment, and warnings list every expected field left empty.
The anatomy panel exists so you can audit the output rather than trust it. Read it field-by-field against the source document in front of you.
The eight source types this builder supports
These eight templates are the entire scope of the tool. Anything not on this list is unsupported, and the builder will not produce a citation for it.
| Source type | Metadata you supply | What the builder outputs |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Style of cause, neutral citation or year, reporter volume, reporter, first page, court, jurisdiction, paragraph or page pinpoint, URL | A single-line case citation with your pinpoint appended in the position the template defines |
| Statute | Title, jurisdiction, statute volume, year, chapter, section pinpoint, URL | A statute citation ordered title, volume, year, chapter, then section pinpoint |
| Regulation | Title, jurisdiction, designation, number, section pinpoint, URL | A regulation citation ordered title, designation, number, then section pinpoint |
| Journal article | Authors, article title, year, volume, issue, journal, first page, pinpoint, URL | An article citation with the title quoted and the journal details following it |
| Book | Authors, title, edition, place, publisher, year, pinpoint, URL | A book citation with publication details grouped in parentheses |
| Chapter in an edited book | Chapter authors, chapter title, editors, book title, edition, place, publisher, year, first page, pinpoint, URL | A chapter citation linking your chapter to the edited collection |
| Website or online document | Authors or organization, title, publication date, URL, access date | An online-source citation ending with the URL and, if supplied, the access date |
| Government report | Authors or organization, title, publication details, date, URL | A report citation with the issuing body carried in the author position |
Required metadata varies by template. The warning list under the output is the authoritative statement of what a given template wanted and did not receive.
What you must verify manually
The builder handles first-reference, long-form citations in the eight templates above. Everything below sits outside what the templates do, and you must draft and verify it yourself against the citation guide your faculty, journal or court requires.
- Short forms and subsequent references, including the bracketed short form you introduce on first reference and every later cross-reference.
- Bilingual and French-language conventions, including French punctuation, spacing and the treatment of translated titles.
- Québec materials and other civil-law sources with volume and compilation conventions the templates do not model.
- Treaties, international instruments, decisions of international bodies, and parliamentary or legislative-history materials such as debates, bills, journals and committee evidence.
- Loose-leaf services, legal encyclopedias, and Indigenous legal sources, including oral histories and the citation practices particular communities and courts expect.
- Parallel citations, subsequent history, and any requirement to cite a specific reporter series or database version.
- Institutional variants: your professor, journal or court may require capitalization, italics, punctuation or ordering that differs from the template output.
Italics and small capitals are typographic choices that live in your word processor. The builder emits plain text, so styling case names, statute titles and book titles is your responsibility after you paste.
Two short workflows
Fictional teaching example — not legal authority.
Workflow one: a case with a paragraph pinpoint
A student has an invented appellate decision in front of them and enters: style of cause Aster v Borealis, neutral citation 2099 FICT 1, court noted as the fictional appellate court, paragraph pinpoint 14. They leave reporter, volume and first page blank, because the invented decision has no reporter.
The output is a single line assembling those four values in template order, and the anatomy panel lists them as style of cause, neutral citation, court, paragraph pinpoint. The empty reporter fields raise no warning, because the template treats reporter details as an alternative to the neutral citation rather than a requirement.
Verification step: the student opens the decision, confirms the party names and the paragraph number carry the proposition they are citing, and applies italics to the style of cause in their word processor.
Fictional teaching example — not legal authority.
Workflow two: a journal article with a missing field
The student enters an invented author, an invented article title, the journal name, and a pinpoint page, then forgets the year and the first page of the article.
The builder still assembles the segments it has and shows two warnings naming the year and the first page. It does not guess either value, and it does not describe the result as complete. The student returns to the article's first page, reads the missing details off the source, enters them, and rebuilds.
Verification step: the anatomy panel is compared line by line against the printed article header before the citation is pasted into a footnote.
Where to go next
- Run the assembled citation through the Citation Checker for a narrow mechanical screen. A clean screen is not a statement of compliance.
- Collect verified citations into the Table of Authorities Builder once each one has been checked against its source.
- Re-verify anything you carried over from an earlier draft, since a citation copied forward is a citation nobody has read recently.
Privacy, academic integrity and independence
Privacy on this page. Every field is processed in your browser by the page's own JavaScript. The builder makes no server request with your metadata, puts no field content in the page URL, and sends no field content to analytics or logs. Your entries live in page memory only: reloading the page or pressing Reset discards them, and nothing is saved between sessions. If you copy the output or print the page, that content is exposed to your own device's clipboard, printer and print-to-file destination.
Academic integrity. The builder arranges metadata you already have; it never verifies that the source exists or that it supports your proposition. Citing a source you have not read is an academic integrity problem no formatter can solve, and no output here is certified, official or guaranteed compliant with any citation guide.
Independence. LegalCalc Ontario is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to McGill University, the McGill Law Journal or the publishers of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, and it is not affiliated with Thomson Reuters or Carswell. This page reproduces no proprietary tables, abbreviation lists, examples or commentary from any citation guide.