Legislative Drafting Manual

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
Use commas to set off the year of a date when month, day and year are 
given. Do not use commas when only month and year are given.
9. Period

The period should be used as frequently as possible. The comma or 
semicolon can and should be avoided.

For example, 
“men, women and children”; not “men, women, and children.” 
The subject of a sentence is never separated from its verb by a single 
comma. The “all or nothing” rule: A single comma is not used in a 
parenthetical phrase or clause.
10. Semicolon
A semicolon is used except after the last item. If a sentence consists of two 
clauses, either of which requires a comma, a semicolon is used to separate the 
two clauses. However, in such circumstances it is preferable to use two 
sentences. If a sentence consists of two independent clauses connected by a 
conjunction, a comma is used before the conjunction.
11.Apostrophe

The apostrophe shows possessiveness of nouns and indefinite pronouns. 
The apostrophe is omitted if the proper name of an entity omits it, e.g., 
Veterans Administration. Possessive personal pronouns (its, their) never 
take an apostrophe.

An apostrophe is properly used in measure of time and space in the 
genitive form, e.g., two weeks‟ pay. Since drafting is formal expression, 
apostrophes for contractions, as reflecting speech patterns, are not used.
12. Quotation marks
For purposes of consistency, periods and commas are placed inside quotation 
marks. Other punctuation marks should be placed inside quotation marks only if 
the punctuation marks are part of the matter quoted. Exception: In writing 
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amendments to bills, no punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks 
unless they are a part of the text of the amendment.
13. Parentheses
Material in parentheses should be avoided in the text of a bill because the use 
may be confused with brackets indicating material to be deleted. Usually it is 
possible to substitute commas for parentheses; if not, perhaps the sentence 
needs to be rephrased or split.
14. Brackets

Brackets [ ] indicate the deletion of material by amendment and are used 
for no other purpose in legislative drafting.

To indicate blank lines in a form prescribed by statute, underscoring is used 
rather than dots or dashes.
15. Citation 
Articles should be cited simply as Article 1(a), Civil Code/ 
family law, ….