How to Tab Your Books

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Recently, I've been really getting into tabbing my books. It's so helpful when I'm trying to find something quickly.

But when I first began tabbing my books, I wasn't sure what information was going to be important or where I should even begin. I've slowly been figuring it out throughout the semester and I finally feel as if I've gotten the hang out it now.

The easiest way for me to explain how this works is through my Bluebook. I use it pretty much all the time, and the tabs on it are a lifesaver when I'm trying to get through the billions of citations in my memos. Also, because I'm only in my first semester, I only have casebooks for half of the first year core classes.

First off, it's best to figure out a color coding scheme so you know which section of your Bluebook you're referring to. Right now, I have my tables as pink, my blue pages as blue, and my white pages as yellow.

Even though the Bluebook has colored pages to let you know if you're in the blue pages, tables, or the white pages, it's nice to just pull it out and find something from the tabs sticking out already.

Make sure you're tabbing what you know you'll need. If you choose to tab something that you only need to look up once in a blue moon, you're just going to confuse yourself with all the extra tabs.

In my table tabs, I have the page for Colorado marked because that's where most of my memos have been focused, the first page of Table 1 (U.S. Jurisdictions), and Table 6 (Abbreviations).

Within the blue pages and the white pages, I have plenty of things tabbed right now because I'm still learning how to properly use the Bluebook. To be honest, who knows when I'll actually figure that all out?!

I've tabbed how to cite cases and statutes, short form citations, type face for documents, order of authorities, and signals.

The best advice I can give you is to tab what you know will be useful to you. If you're going to be searching for that page or section all the time, put a tab on it and write out a label to give yourself a break.

xoxo,

Rachel

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