Law (act): how to cite in Vancouver Style?

Create a spot-on reference in Vancouver

Select a source type:

Book Website Journal article Video (online)

Archival document Blog post Book Book chapter Complete reference Conference paper Copyright certificate Court case Dictionary Dictionary entry Disc Dissertation / Thesis Encyclopedia Encyclopedia article Extended abstract of dissertation Image Journal article Law / Act Newspaper article Patent Podcast Preprint Press release Religious text Report Social media post Software Standard Video (online) Video game Website

General rules

The manual of Vancouver Style – Citing Medicine – does not provide any explicit instructions for creating bibliographic references to laws and acts; in contrast, the manual recommends using the rules described in The Bluebook: a Uniform System of Citation in such cases.

The Bluebook provides the rules for citing the laws of particular states from the perspective of the American user. Taking into account the common practice for adapting the references to laws (for details, see the article on referencing laws in APA Style), the web service Grafiati offers the following template combining the recommendations of The Bluebook and Citing Medicine:

Act Title, Act type act number [Internet], date of adoption [cited date cited] (Country). Available from: URL

N.B. The Bluebook specifies that the Country element should be omitted if it is known from the other parts of the reference.

Example in a list of references

Health Act 2009 [Internet], 2009 Jan 21 [cited 2021 Jun 29] (Great Britain). Available from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/21/contents