What is A Bibliography in An Essay?

Most students are unaware of what a bibliography is all about till they reach college or university. The reason being that at school levels, essays are easy and just considered an attempt to write about a given topic, without mentioning sources or stating the purpose. However, at senior levels, the meaning and the purpose of the essay change, and the teachers expect students to do a more mature job when they are working on their assignments.

What Is A Bibliography, And What Is It Important?

According to a cheap essay writing service, a bibliography is an important part of writing an essay or a research paper. Once you are done with the writing part, it is time to make an alphabetical list of all the books, journals, and websites that you used for gathering information. In various writing styles, this list is called a bibliography. The good thing about creating a bibliography is that it can speak louder than words and helps the readers understand how the writer has worked on the essay and which sources have been utilized in the process. There are different types of bibliographies, and students need to know more about them to do a good job on their essays.

The bibliography has been best defined as the list of sources that are used to get information for an essay. It is provided at the end of the paper, either on the past pages or the last few pages. The best way for students to write a bibliography is by keeping a track of the books, journals, articles, or websites they used during their research work. The right thing to do is to note down the full title, author, place, and date of publication a well as the publisher so that you do not face any problem in the end when you are done with the research and writing process and do not know where you obtained a particular piece of information from.

Checking the information and coming up with accurate bibliography is one task that students need to learn to master. It is because they will be doing it quite often during their academic career and the better they learn to do it, the better results they will enjoy in their class. When putting together a bibliography for an essay, you should list all the sources, including texts, articles, interviews, and any other source of information in an alphabetic order, by the author’s name to avoid confusion. Sources that do not have authors such as encyclopedias or movies can be used by their own titles. It is important to remember that while there are different formats for bibliography, you must use the one that has been recommended by your teacher or university to avoid redoing it.

How To Write A Bibliography For MLA, APA, And Chicago Formats:

Writing a bibliography can be perplexing, especially when you are doing it for the first time. Many students get confused because the word bibliography can have double meaning when it comes to writing styles. “Bibliography” can be a catch-all word to mean all source lists in all writing styles. It is also the title of the Chicago/Turabian end citation. However, MLA style and APA style do not technically have bibliographies as they have reference lists.

There is a difference between the two, and it is essential to understand how both these terms can be distinguished. A bibliography lists all the references that are used for creating a piece of writing. It includes everything that has been used in the creation of the work, even if you have not cited it in the body of the writing itself. It can include but is not limited to background sources. On the other hand, a reference list only contains the sources cited directly in the body of the paper or essay. These are actual quotes and ideas that were used by other writers or materials. It is only when you understand what it means that you will be able to work out how to do it right. Presented here are some examples of bibliography in MLA, APA, and Chicago formats:

MLA Works Cited Example:

This style was designed for high school and college students. MLA formatting makes citing websites, advertisements, blogs, books, and other sources easy for students as it uses an author-page in-text citation style and works cited page. It includes the following pieces of information, in this order:

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Source.” Title of Container, other contributors, version, numbers, publisher, publication date, location

APA Reference List Example:

APA style is used for writing a technical paper in psychology, biology, or chemistry. The American Psychological Association (APA) designed this style for formatting citations for journals, books, technical manuals, and other large technical sources. The basic format for APA citation requires listing the author’s name, the title of the book, the publisher’s name, and the date of publication.

Chicago or Turabian Bibliography Example:

Turabian is another format students use at the high school level or college. It is the student version of the Chicago Manual of Style that uses an author-date citation style with a reference page, or it can use notes and a bibliography. You must consult your teacher regarding the details to do it right.

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Turabian is a diverse style that can work well for fiction and nonfiction sources. You can use it for citing essays related to arts, history, philosophy, and religion, among other subjects. It is easy to write a bibliography in Turabian style as it just needs a little understand as compared to other complex styles that are a bit complex.

Annotated Bibliography Example:

Students can also create an annotated bibliography if they are not creating the end citation one. It can either be an MLA annotated bibliography or you could also go with Chicago-style annotation. An annotated bibliography adds a summative informative or evaluative annotation for each entry in the list. It provides more information for the reader about the sources you used to write your paper.

When writing an essay for a college or university project, you must be aware of the publication, author, corporation, title date as well as publication company, volume, and URL to come up with an accurate bibliography. It will not only help the teacher see how hard you have worked on your project but also save you from plagiarism as every source is clearly listed. Depending on the style you are using, you can write a bibliography to present the summary of your hard work.