ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Citation of United Kingdom legislation

You know how when you play a game with your friends and you make up some rules to follow, like "no peeking" or "only jump on one foot"? That's kind of like what the United Kingdom does when they make their laws. They write down all the rules we have to follow in something called legislation, and it's important to know where those rules come from.

In order to make sure everyone knows where the rules come from, we have to give credit to the people who made them. Just like when you draw a picture and you write your name on it to show that you made it, we do the same thing with the laws. We write down who made the rules so that if we have questions or problems later, we know who to ask.

So what we do is we write down the name of the law and who made it, as well as some details about where it can be found. This is called a citation. A citation helps us find the law again later if we need to.

For example, if we wanted to cite the Children Act from 1989, we might write it like this: Children Act 1989, c. 41.

That might seem like a strange way to write it, but it actually makes a lot of sense! The "Children Act" tells us what the law is about, and the "1989" tells us when it was made. The "c. 41" part is a little more tricky - that just means that it's the 41st law to be made that year.

Overall, citations are just a way to give credit to the people who make the rules and to help us find those rules again if we need to. It might seem a little confusing at first, but it's an important part of how we keep track of all the laws that we have to follow!