Secondary legislation - quick links

This page is intended to collect links to relevant parts of the User Manual for drafters of secondary legislation (SIs, SSIs and NISRs), grouped and labelled for ease of reference.

It will be updated to reflect common areas where users require guidance.

It is not intended to be comprehensive but rather to serve as a ‘first port of call’ if you are struggling to find relevant information in the User Manual.

Beginning your document

• Creating a new project

• Documents and folders on the Project Tab - including information on Working, Snapshot and Significant Versions

• Duplicating a document version

• Import legislation from www.legislation.gov.uk

Viewing your document in the Editor

• Opening a document in the Editor

• Viewing tags - tags allow you to see the structure of the document. See Basic XML Principles below.

• Using the structure view - important for selecting, moving and deleting provisions.

Basics of drafting in the Editor

• Inserting provisions and other elements

  • Note that lists can be used to imitate structured content in Tables and elsewhere. See: Working with lists in tables and elsewhere

• Deleting provisions and other elements

  • Note that it is important to use the methods set out on the page linked above when deleting provisions.

• Wrapping and unwrapping provisions - i.e., adding and removing grouping elements like Parts, Sections and Chapters

  • Note that if you have drafted provisions, and you want to have grouping provisions that organise these existing provisions, you need to use the guidance on ‘wrapping' provided above.

• Promoting and demoting provisions - i.e., changing a provision into a ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ level provision (e.g., Paragraph --> Regulation)

• Moving provisions, tables and amendments within a document

• Using cut, copy and paste

• Adding formatting to text (bold, italic, superscript etc.)

• Saving your document - we recommend saving your document frequently.

Numbering of provisions

• Renumbering provisions - useful if your document numbering has got out of order as you have added / moved / removed provisions

• Locking and unlocking numbers - i.e., preventing them from being renumbered

References

• References - How to create cross-references (i.e., links) to provisions inside and outside your document

  • Create by ‘tagging’: References | How-to-“tag”-references

  • Create internal references with the Structure view or right-click menu: References | How-to-create-a-reference-using-the-Structure-View-or-the-right-click-context-menu

Inserting and editing special document elements

• Quoted structures - i.e., textual insertions.

• Inserting and managing tables

• Inserting and managing math formulae

• Images

• Managing footnotes

  • Note that you can automatically generate Citation footnotes, which set out the legislative history of a provision, using: Citation footnotes (legislative history footnote)

Editing document front matter

• Managing document information - update WSI Title, year and number.

• Inserting table of contents

• Managing Subject, Extent and Subsubject

• Managing Dates - Add and edit Made, Laid and Coming into Force dates.

• Inserting pre-populated rubrics - add rubrics including Correction, Resolution, Approved, Laid in draft or Royal Presence.

Explanatory notes and commencement history tables

• Inserting Explanatory Notes

• Inserting Commencement Tables

Reviewing your document

• Using tracked changes - mark up added or deleted text, and review changes.

• Adding and managing comments

• Generating and viewing a PDF

• Document checks - validating your document

  • Note that this page covers both Document Checks, which provide guidance on document formatting and content and may be ‘mandatory’ or ‘advisory’, and XML Warnings, which are always necessary to address.

Collaborating on documents

• Sharing a document with another organisation

• Multi-user editing and locks - two or more users can work on the same document (See alsoReleasing Locks).

Signing and preparing your document for registration

If you are responsible for processing and submitting SIs/SSIs/NISRs/WSIs, refer to this page for a fuller collection of relevant links: Processing and submitting SI/SSIs

• Managing Signatures - when you want to change signatures, you need to update them using the method provided here, not by directly changing in the Editor.

• Converting a Draft SI/SSI/NISR/WSI into a Made version

Submitting your document

• Submitting an SI/SSI to TNA - this covers both marking a document as submitted to TNA and downloading the ZIP file required to submit to TNA.

• Downloading a ZIP file of a document

  • Note that to submit to TNA, you need to download a ZIP from a document version which has a PDF saved against it - e.g., a Submitted to TNA significant version (see guidance above).

Basic XML principles

Lawmaker documents are XML documents. XML is a language for labelling data.

Whilst it isn’t a requirement to understand XML to use Lawmaker, grasping the very basic principles may help you, particularly if you want to draft many and/or lengthy documents.

• See Introduction to XML

Getting help

• Known Issues - for known technical problems. Each ‘known issue’ page contains information on working around the issue in question, where possible.

• Support and Lawmaker support portal - information on Lawmaker technical support arrangements.

• http://support.lawmaker.legislation.gov.uk/ - direct link to the Service portal.