What it is
A provision is divided into parts and each carries a label: a number for a paragraph, a letter for a point, a further numeral below that. Citing one means writing the label into running text, and four independent decisions are taken at once: which designator marks the level, what punctuation encloses it, whether the level is named in words, and whether its number is a figure or spelled out.
Nothing in these languages compels an answer to any of the four. A subdivision can be bracketed and closed up to the article number, set in apposition with its level named, or marked with a single closing bracket. What varies is not what the grammar permits but what a body has settled.
The wording that introduces and identifies an instrument belongs to the phraseology section. This record owns the numbering and the punctuation of the pointer itself.
Where the expectation comes from
Every rule opened for this record is the rule of a named body. No orthography authority claims how a provision's parts are cited, so the tier is House throughout: each body below could revise its own text without any code changing.
- The English Style Guide of the Directorate-General for Translation directs at 2.20 that numbered paragraphs take "a pair of brackets closed up to the article number", and at 6.8 that the original's serial numbering styles "should be retained in the translation" while the punctuation around them is adapted. It binds that institution's authors and translators and nobody else.
- The Dutch Aanwijzingen voor de regelgeving give the form at 3.29, "Artikel 5, tweede lid, is van toepassing", and rule the rivals out in the toelichting: "Vermeldingen als 'lid 2', 'sub a' of 'letter b' worden dus vermeden". Aanwijzing 1.2 binds ministers, state secretaries and those working under them who prepare and adopt regulations.
- The Turkish Mevzuat Hazırlama Usul ve Esasları Hakkında Yönetmelik sets the levels at madde 13 and the citation at madde 21: the suffix follows the article number after a space and without an apostrophe, paragraphs are cited in words rather than figures, and the letter of a point is bracketed. Its own dayanak attests the rule, "7 nci ve 537 nci maddelerine".
Three instruments of three legal kinds, and the statutory one is the narrowest in reach: it governs Turkish legislative drafting and no text in another language.
Consequences for translation
The conversion is determinate once the governing authority is known, and the authority is not the same thing as the language.
- Naming the target language does not fix the form. An EU regulation in Dutch writes the subdivision one way and a Dutch ministerial draft another, because two bodies each hold one convention and neither reaches the other's texts. A finding that names a language and not an authority has not said enough to act on.
- The designator travels and its punctuation is converted. The retention rule at 6.8 reaches across the language pair, so renumbering a list from scratch breaks it even where the target community's punctuation is right.
- The letters run out, and the rules for continuing them differ. In EU texts the points after z run from aa to zz and then aaa to zzz; Turkish uses every letter of its own alphabet, "aa, bb, cc, çç, … zz, aaa, bbb, …", so a list carried across as aa, bb, cc, dd has dropped çç and misaligned every point after it. That is mechanically checkable, and worth checking.
- A deviation is a finding inside the commissioning body's work and a preference outside it, which is what the House tier is for.
Examples
EN>NL
- Source: Article 21(2)
- Target: artikel 21, lid 2
- Comment: Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, the citation of the Treaty basis in the preamble, English and Dutch official versions. This Dutch is the institution's, not the Dutch state's, whose Aanwijzingen require the ordinal in words and reject the lid 2 form by name. Reasoning from the target language rather than the commissioning body gives the wrong one of two correct Dutch forms.
EN>FR
- Source: Article 21(2)
- Target: son article 21, paragraphe 2
- Comment: The same citation in the French version. French sets the subdivision in apposition as Dutch does, and names the level with a different noun again. The bracket is not a European convention the others decline to use: it is the English one.
FR>EN
- Source: point a)
- Target: point (a)
- Comment: The guide's own worked conversion at 6.8. The letter is retained and only the bracketing changes. Renumbering the point, or keeping the single bracket, breaks one half of the rule each.
References
- English Style Guide. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, eighth edition January 2016, file consulted 21 November 2025. Sections 2.20 (Round brackets in citations) and 6.8 (Serial numbers).
- Aanwijzingen voor de regelgeving, consolidated to the eleventh amendment, Stcrt. 2022, 5649. Aanwijzing 1.2 (Aanwijzingen voor de rijksdienst) and Aanwijzing 3.29 (Terminologie verwijzing) with its toelichting, read on their own pages at the Kenniscentrum voor beleid en regelgeving.
- Mevzuat Hazırlama Usul ve Esasları Hakkında Yönetmelik, put into force by Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı 5210 of 23 February 2022, Resmî Gazete of 24 February 2022, sayı 31760. Madde 13 (Maddeler) and madde 21 (Atıfların yapılması), consolidated text on the legislation portal of the Cumhurbaşkanlığı. Its madde 30 repealed the Yönetmelik put into force by Bakanlar Kurulu Kararı 2005/9986 of 19 December 2005.
- Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2016 on promoting the free movement of citizens by simplifying the requirements for presenting certain public documents in the European Union, English, French and Dutch language versions, preamble, citation of the Treaty basis.