Schedules are components of legislation 

Schedules are components (not units) of bills, Acts and some instruments. They appear at the end of legislation. Schedules are either amending or non-amending.

Amending schedules are more common. There are drafting rules about their use and the order in which each schedule appears.

Most amending schedules list amendments to other Acts, bills and instruments that will take effect when the legislation commences. Some contain other provisions such as savings and transitional arrangements.

Non-amending schedules have many different purposes. Units of non-amending schedules are named differently depending on the purpose. Non-amending schedules sometimes include text that could be contained in the body of the legislation as a section. In this case, the basic unit is a clause.

Cite at schedule level, not the basic unit level, for most content.

Style for schedule titles is an initial capital

Use capital ‘S’ for long and shortened forms of named schedules.

Always capitalise ‘Schedule’ or ‘Schedules’ when you write the title of schedules or refer to particular schedules.

The shortened form is ‘Sch’ for singular and plural.

The basic unit of an amending schedule is an item

For most texts, you don’t need to identify the units of different types of schedules or to decide how units should be cited. It is enough to cite at schedule level.

Amending schedules are divided into parts, then into divisions. Both are given arabic numerals – for example, Part 1 Division 3. Divisions contain items divided into subitems, which are given numbers in parentheses – (1), (2) and so on.

There is no shortened form for ‘item’ or ‘subitem’.