Hereinafter

'Hereinafter' is a citation device that lets a writer give a source its full name once and then refer to it by a shortened tag for the rest of the document. In legal writing it takes a distinctive form: the full citation is followed by a bracketed 'hereinafter' tag, e.g. Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 90 (1981) [hereinafter Restatement]. Every later reference can then say 'Restatement § 205' and the reader knows where to look.

The device solves a real problem. A brief that cites a fifty-word treaty title, a multi-author report, or a case with a lengthy caption becomes unreadable if the full name is repeated. Short-form tags keep the prose moving; the bracketed introduction is the writer's promise that the tag refers to exactly one thing, first defined at exactly one place.

Similar shortening conventions exist outside law. Academic writers introduce abbreviated titles in a first footnote and use them thereafter; editors of collected works set out sigla — short symbols standing for particular manuscripts or editions — in the front matter. All are versions of the same discipline: define once, reuse consistently.

Common mistake: introducing a 'hereinafter' tag and then using a different short form later in the same document. The point of the device is fixed reference; drift between forms defeats the reader, who now has to keep two tags in mind for one source.