How to Write an Annotated Bibliography

Some students don’t really know how to write a bibliography according to the highest standards of quality. An annotated bibliography is often called the bibliographic references, which are used in writing a term or research paper, thesis, research and article publications, etc. This list usually includes all types of sources: books, journals, newspapers, magazines, audio and video recordings, archival materials, Internet publications and e-books. Writing an annotated bibliography means to organize the reference list in accordance with certain rules.

How to write a bibliography? Instruction

1. Start creating a list of references at the same time with writing the text. To do this, you should create a separate notebook where you will write information about all special sources, or create a special file on your computer. However, you it might be better to use the cards of the same size, for example, 125x75mm. Collecting them in a box, you will get a card index. This system is easy to use; when adding new cards, remove unnecessary ones and rearrange the rest.

2. Make the description of references according to the rules of a citation style. Before you write a bibliography, you should use cards in the library catalog, when you are in a library. Employees at bibliographic departments will help you to compile a description in complex cases. In addition, the most of high schools, colleges and universities will provide you with the guidelines for the compilation of bibliographic descriptions for various documents.

3. Mark your cards with special signs and glosses. It will help you to remember whether you used the book or it was useless. For example, if you have found an important quote, it can be written on the card with the numbers of pages on which the text is placed.

4. Organize accumulated cards properly. While you write an annotated bibliography, reference lists can be organized in the following ways: alphabetical, chronological, thematic, in order of appearance in the text, according to the types of publications.

5. Alphabetical list of references is the easiest and the most common way to organize the list of sources. In this case, all the descriptions have a strict alphabetical order by author and title. Editions in foreign languages are placed at the end of the list in alphabetical order. This list is most often used for a small number of documents.

6. In chronological list of bibliographic descriptions of documents there should be years of publication included, within each year - alphabetically by author and title.

7. When writing an essay or research paper, the sources from different areas of knowledge are required to use; it is advisable to make a thematic list.

8. The list, drawn up in order of appearance in the source text, reflects the sequence of citations of various documents. It is important to remember that the documents cited repeatedly, should be mentioned in the list only once.

9. In research papers an annotated bibliography made according to the types of publications is often used. There should be listed: official documents, regulatory documentation, manuals, dictionaries and reference books, scientific and educational publications, popular literature, articles from the press.

10. Each element of the annotated bibliography in the list starts with a red line. Place the reference list at the end of a document.

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