How to Write a Bibliography?

Essential Requirements of Writing a Bibliography

A mandatory requirement of copyright laws and academic conventions is that whenever a research paper is written, there should be a section at the end of it where you acknowledge the sources used.

Hence, writing a bibliography means listing all the sources which you have consulted while writing your essay or research article. The sources may be in the form of printed and online books, websites, web documents, web blogs, newspaper articles, journals, pod casts, wikis, unpublished material, maps etc.

Citation ensures that the information contained in the research paper is based on logic, truth and facts. Absence of references or bibliography indicates that the paper may be a piece of plagiarism.

Standard Formats Used for Bibliography Writing

There are various formats used in the creation of a bibliography such as:

• American Psychological Association / APA Style Bibliography
• Modern Language Association of America/ MLA Style Bibliography
• Chicago Manual of Style and Council of Biology Editors (CBE)
• Harvard Style Bibliography
• Turabian Style Bibliography

The APA style of referencing is common in the papers written on topics of social sciences; MLA style is used in field of humanities; and CBE is a popular citation style in the natural sciences.

For some of you writing a bibliography is a complicated task but once you become familiar with the rules—citation can become a joyful experience.

Guide Steps for Creating a Correct Bibliography

In order to correctly do your bibliography go through the outline of a bibliography along with the following guide steps:

1. The author’s last and first name (if there is more than one author, then the names will be arranged alphabetically)
2. Year of publication
3. Title of the book/periodical/article
4. Name of publisher
5. Place of publication
6. Volume number and Issue number (in case of journals)
7. Pager numbers
8. URL and accessed date (in case of website and electronic articles)

A useful advice: Whenever you consult any source, please note down the above points so that when the research paper is complete, you have the whole list of references with you. It is wise that you do it because usually people forget which source they used to create the content of their paper and then relocating takes up a great chunk of time and effort.