How to Write a Bibliography
The bibliography is the list of all the sources used and recommended for further reading by the author at the end of a dissertation. The section must provide enough information on the source that it can check independently. Each citation must contain the following information:
Author’s name, the title of the source, name of the publisher and the year of the publication, page number where the information appears.
The bibliography section comes after the main body of the dissertation. The format of the part depends on the style adopted for the thesis. In general, there are various standards like the Harvard, MLA, APA, etc.,
The APA style and the absence of bibliography section:
The APA style of academic writing is the guideline adopted by American Psychological Association published in their manual for presenting journals. There is no bibliography in APA style. Instead, the obligation is to provide a reference list. The difference between the reference and the bibliography is that former contains the list of only the sources cited in the paper while the latter is the author’s reference to the sources cited and also a recommendation list for further reading on the topic. Works in the social sciences field usually adopt this style.
Bibliography in MLA format:
The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) presented their style guide for academic writing in Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. If you are using the MLA format, then you should keep track of all the papers, books, films, internet articles, and any other source that you consulted while writing the paper.
The basic tenant for writing the bibliography in this format is like most other, one has to keep track of the author, title, publisher, published year, and the page number where the information cited is taken. The format, however, also requires information on the place of publication to be presented next to the title of the work, before the publisher’s name.
The list must be presented in the alphabetical order in the bibliography section. Each list follows the following order:
The name of the author, presented with the last name going first, a comma, their first name.
This is followed by a full stop.
The title of the work referenced follows it, underlined and followed by a period.
The name of the city where the source was published and a colon follows it.
The publisher’s name, a comma, and the year of the publication followed by a full stop follow the city of publication in the given order.
This style is generally adopted by the researchers in the Arts and Humanities field.
An example of a single entry in the bibliography section written in MLA style:
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Oxford: Oxford Publishers, 1987.
Articles, movies, and other sources:
When citing sources from an article, the rule changes to properly suit the citation of the article and in turn help readers check the source independently. If the article has an author, it comes first in the same order as mentioned for the books, i.e., last name followed by the first name separated by a comma. It is followed the name of the article before the title of the magazine or the newspaper in which it was published. The year of the publication follows it, followed by a colon and the page number from where it is referenced. There is no need to mention the place of the publication.
In case of movies, the title of movie is referenced first, followed by the name of the director, the year of its release, the medium of the cinema, and the name of the studio which produced the movie.
Annotated Bibliography:
An annotated bibliography is quite like any bibliography except it contains a comment on the source by the author. It is added to provide better guidance for the readers who are interested in further reading on the topic. Most dissertations don’t require annotated bibliography.
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(Note: All examples are provided as a scale of reference. It may or may not be from an actual source)
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