What this checker examines
The checker reads one citation as a string of characters. It has no index of Canadian decisions, statutes or journals, so it can only notice patterns that are visible in the text itself. Findings are grouped as errors, warnings and notes according to how confident the underlying pattern is, and every finding is a prompt to look at the source rather than a verdict.
| Category of check | What the rule looks at |
|---|---|
| Delimiters | Opening and closing parentheses and square brackets are counted, and an odd number of straight double-quote characters is flagged |
| Whitespace | Leading and trailing spaces, tab characters, line breaks inside the citation, and repeated internal spaces; a normalized preview is shown beside your unchanged original |
| Placeholders and punctuation | Obvious placeholder text left in the string, and repeated punctuation sequences such as doubled commas or periods |
| Pinpoints | Only when you tick the pinpoint checkbox: whether a paragraph, page or section marker of the type you selected appears anywhere in the text |
| Source-type clues | Structural markers expected for the type you selected, such as a party separator for a case, a statute volume abbreviation and chapter, a regulation designation and number, a quoted title and year for an article, or publication parentheses for a book or chapter |
| Years and URLs | Four-digit years outside a plausible range, and, for online sources, a missing URL or a URL with no scheme |
| Features outside scope | Short forms, ibid, supra, infra, introductory signals and subsequent history are detected only so the checker can tell you it does not evaluate them |
Selecting the expected source type is what unlocks the type-specific clues. The checker never changes your text: the normalized preview is displayed for comparison and copying, and your original is always shown unchanged beside it.
The cautious Not sure mode
Choosing Not sure tells the checker it may not assume any particular source type. It then runs only the checks that hold for any citation: delimiter balance, whitespace, placeholders, repeated punctuation, implausible years, and the pinpoint check if you asked for one. Statute, regulation, case, article and book clues are all withheld, because applying them to the wrong type would produce confident nonsense.
Use Not sure for anything unusual, for material outside the eight supported types, and whenever a type-specific run produces findings that look wrong for the source you actually have. Fewer findings in this mode means less was examined, not that more was approved.
What it cannot verify
- Authenticity. The checker cannot tell whether the decision, statute, regulation or article exists, or whether you have transcribed it from a real source.
- Treatment and currency. It performs no noting up: it does not know whether a case was overturned, distinguished or followed, or whether a provision was amended, repealed or not yet in force.
- Metadata accuracy. Party names, years, volumes, chapters, section numbers, page numbers and paragraph numbers are never compared against anything. A wrong number that looks structurally normal produces no finding.
- Whether a pinpoint actually supports your proposition, which only reading the source can establish.
- Exhaustive typography and punctuation. Italics, small capitals, en dashes, thin spaces and many punctuation conventions are outside these rules.
- Variants and institutional requirements, including bilingual and French conventions, Québec and international materials, parallel citations, and the specific rules your professor, journal or court imposes.
- Compliance with the McGill Guide or any other citation guide. The checker makes no compliance determination of any kind.
A run that produces no findings means only that none of the implemented rules matched. It is not a statement that the citation is correct, valid, official, certified or compliant.
Three findings and how to read them
Fictional teaching example — not legal authority.
Finding one: no locator detected in a case citation
An invented case citation is entered as party names plus a court name, with no neutral citation, reporter or year. With the case type selected, the checker reports that no identifying locator was detected.
Read this as: the string contains nothing that looks like the identifier a reader would use to find the decision. Manual verification step: open the decision and copy its neutral citation or reporter reference from the source, then rebuild the citation. The finding is not a correction, and the checker has proposed no replacement text.
Fictional teaching example — not legal authority.
Finding two: an expected pinpoint is absent
A student ticks the pinpoint checkbox, selects paragraph, and submits an invented citation that ends at the court name. The checker reports that a paragraph pinpoint was expected but no paragraph marker was found.
Read this as: you told the tool a pinpoint should be present, and the text has no marker of that type. Manual verification step: find the paragraph in the decision that actually carries your proposition and add it. If you meant a page rather than a paragraph, change the pinpoint type and run the check again.
Fictional teaching example — not legal authority.
Finding three: whitespace normalization
A citation pasted out of a word processor arrives with a trailing space, a tab between two segments and a doubled internal space. The checker reports each of those separately and displays a normalized preview with single spaces and no surrounding whitespace.
Read this as: mechanical tidying only. Manual verification step: compare the normalized preview against your original before copying it, since normalization touches spacing and nothing else. The normalized text is not a corrected or validated citation.
Where to go next
- Rebuild anything structurally incomplete in the Canadian Legal Citation Builder, where each element is a separate labelled field.
- Verify metadata against the source document, then note up separately using a citator your library provides.
- Screen citations one at a time before they enter your Table of Authorities, so problems are caught before the list is assembled.
Privacy, academic integrity and independence
Privacy on this page. The citation you paste is analysed in your browser by the page's own JavaScript. Nothing you type is sent to a server, placed in the page URL, or reported to analytics or logs. The citation and its findings exist in page memory only: reloading the page or pressing Reset discards them, and nothing persists between sessions. Copying the findings or printing the page exposes that content to your own device's clipboard, printer and print-to-file destination.
Academic integrity. A clean run is not a warrant. You remain responsible for reading each source, confirming that the pinpoint supports your proposition, noting up, and meeting the formatting rules your professor, journal or court sets.
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. No proprietary tables, abbreviation lists, examples or commentary are reproduced here, and this tool performs no McGill Guide compliance check.