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Reading a citation for a United States statute:

Usually it's sufficent to use the citation for only one source of the law, but make sure it's the source you're quoting. That is, if you quote text from the United States Code, use the USC cite.

The sample citations below tell you where to locate the No Child Left Behind Act in three different locations.

	PL 107-110 is the 110th Public Law passed by the 107th Congress. Public Laws are issued as slip laws and then gathered into Statutes at Large (abbreviated Stat.).
	NCLB begins on p.1425 of Statutes at Large volume 115. Laws are next arranged according to subject matter and added to the United States Code (abbreviated USC).
	The U.S. Code contains the federal laws of the United States as they are currently in effect (i.e. as amended since first passage into law). Each subject area is called a title (e.g. Title 20 is Education) and may encompass several volumes. Public Laws are often divided according to content and distributed among titles. For example, some of the NCLB is in Title 20 but some sections are in Title 5 and Title 25. Some of the NCLB Act is located in section 6301 of U.S. Code Title 20.

Reading citations for legislative history documents

As a general guideline, H=House of Representatives, S=Senate

	This bill was the first one introduced to the House of Representatives in the 107th Congress.
	This hearing was the 62nd held by a Senate committee during the 106th Congress.
	This document was the 34th one commissioned, obtained, or created by a House of Representatives committee during the 107th Congress.
	This was the 710th report from a House of Representatives committee during the 105th Congress.
	Discussion from the floor of the Senate may be found in volume 154 of the Congressional Record, beginning on page S 5412

Reading a citation for a Connecticut statute:

As with the U.S. Code, the Connecticut General Statutes are the subject arrangement of state laws currently in effect and the set is arranged by subject areas called titles. The first citation is the format you'll usually see. It specifies the state code, the title, and the section of the title. Within Connecticut state cases, you will see the second example, where Connecticut is omitted because it's understood that a state case deals with a statute from the same state. Every title is divided into Chapters, as well as sections, so you may occasionally see a citation like the last one.

The sources below list most standard abbreviations for law citations: