I agree with judge Michael Reed’s preference for pinpointing paragraphs with ¶, the pilcrow symbol. But which other Anglo-American judges do this? What legal citation methods recommend this?

The Oxford Standard cites paragraphs in two different ways.

In pinpoint citations, it used square brackets, for example, Hussain v Acorn Independent College Ltd [2011] IRLR 463 [31]-[32]. Elsewhere, for example, where referring to an article or book, it uses the abbreviation ‘para’, for example, ‘Naomi Cunningham and Michael Reed, Employment Tribunal Claims: Tactics and Precedents (3rd edition, Legal Action Group 2010), para 8.43.’

I find this inconsistent and I don’t like either method. Using square brackets for both the year and the paragraph looks odd to me, and the use of two sets of square brackets to show a range of paragraphs looks ugly. ‘Para’ is fairly unobjectionable, but takes up too much room.

In any event, I think there is a better way — the pilcrow (¶) — a convenient typographical character used, among other things, to indicate a reference to a paragraph. So I would write Hussain v Acorn Independent College Ltd [2011] IRLR 463 ¶31-32. This, to my eye, looks better and it’s shorter (6 characters, compared with 9 using either square brackets or ‘para’).

I suspect one of the reasons that the pilcrow is not used is that people don’t know how to produce one on their word processors. If you are using a mac, the keyboard shortcut is alt-7; if you are using windows, it is alt + 0182.

I agree with judge Michael Reed’s preference for pinpointing paragraphs with ¶, the pilcrow symbol - see block quote below. But which other Anglo-American judges do this? What legal citation methods recommend ¶?

The Oxford Standard cites paragraphs in two different ways.

In pinpoint citations, it used square brackets, for example, Hussain v Acorn Independent College Ltd [2011] IRLR 463 [31]-[32]. Elsewhere, for example, where referring to an article or book, it uses the abbreviation ‘para’, for example, ‘Naomi Cunningham and Michael Reed, Employment Tribunal Claims: Tactics and Precedents (3rd edition, Legal Action Group 2010), para 8.43.’

I find this inconsistent and I don’t like either method. Using square brackets for both the year and the paragraph looks odd to me, and the use of two sets of square brackets to show a range of paragraphs looks ugly. ‘Para’ is fairly unobjectionable, but takes up too much room.

In any event, I think there is a better way — the pilcrow (¶) — a convenient typographical character used, among other things, to indicate a reference to a paragraph. So I would write Hussain v Acorn Independent College Ltd [2011] IRLR 463 ¶31-32. This, to my eye, looks better and it’s shorter (6 characters, compared with 9 using either square brackets or ‘para’).

I suspect one of the reasons that the pilcrow is not used is that people don’t know how to produce one on their word processors. If you are using a mac, the keyboard shortcut is alt-7; if you are using windows, it is alt + 0182.