Field guide / Rule 06 — Symbols
Three real marks stand in for words you would otherwise spell out — and three ASCII fakes, (tm), (c) and (r), that your keyboard reaches for instead. Setting the real ones is easy; knowing when not to is the part that matters in a legal document.
They look like decoration, but each is a specific claim. © marks a copyright — it precedes a year and an owner, © 2024 Rossi & Marsh LLP. ™ claims a trademark that has not been federally registered; anyone may use it on a name they treat as a brand. ® claims a trademark that has been registered — and using it on a mark that hasn’t is, in most places, unlawful.
Because a typewriter had none of these keys, people type the parenthetical stand-ins — (c), (tm), (r) — and hope the software swaps them. It usually does. In a brief, that is exactly the problem.
A word processor’s autocorrect turns every (c) into © and every (r) into ®, the moment you type them. For most writing that is a convenience. For anyone who cites statutes, it is a landmine: § 1983(c) becomes § 1983©, Rule 12(b)(6) keeps its (b) but any stray (c) flips, and an enumerated list — (a) notice; (b) hearing; (c) appeal — quietly sprouts a copyright symbol in the middle.
So we split the difference on the principle this whole guide runs on — fix the unambiguous, leave the ambiguous alone. (tm) always becomes ™, because nothing else is ever written that way. (c) becomes © only when a year follows it — (c) 2024 is a copyright line; (c) beside a statute or in a list is not, and stays exactly as you typed it.
The registered symbol is the one mark with legal weight of its own, and (r) is the most overloaded stand-in of all: it is a party tag (Sen. Cruz (R-TX)), a subsection (1983(r)), and an ordinary letter in parentheses. Guessing wrong could either break a citation or assert a registration that doesn’t exist. Neither is ours to risk — so we leave every (r) untouched, and if a mark of yours is genuinely registered, you set the ® by hand, where the claim belongs.
Type the shorthand and you get the set version back — with your citations and lists left exactly as they were:
Nothing else is ever written (tm) — so it always becomes the real mark.
A year follows, so this is a copyright line — set with a real ©.
A statutory subsection, not a copyright — left exactly as written.
An enumerated list survives intact — no stray symbol mid-sentence.
(r) is never touched — ® is a claim only you can make.
In short
Use the real ™, © and ® — never the alphabet in parentheses. Let us set (tm) and a dated (c) for you; keep ® and every bare (c) or (r) in your own hands, because in a legal document those parentheses are usually doing another job.
Want to see it on your own text? Convert a document and read the cleanup report — every symbol we set is counted there.