What is Annotated Bibliography

When we enter college, we experience an immediate difference in how we do our assignments. There is a major change in the format etc. Here you need to add a proper bibliography. This bibliography is called an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is basically a list of books or any other work. But that is not all. With the citations of the books you also have to add a small paragraph that includes the descriptive and the evaluation of that work.

The sources you are citing in your paper need to be explained properly. This explanation is a combination of the different comments you think are related to the citation. These are called annotations and hence the name annotated bibliography was formed.

To understand how to write a proper annotated bibliography, you first need to make sure you have a clear idea about the citations you are going to use in your paper. You can only write a good explanation once you know the topic you are writing on and you have a proper source to refer to in your work. Knowing the idea behind using a specific source is very important. This can help you in critically evaluating the source and making your paper better and more authentic.

What are General guidelines to Write Annotated Bibliography?

The first thing that one should keep in mind before writing an annotated bibliography is that there are two parts to this. The first is called citation. And the second part is known as annotation. Citations can be of different forms but there are some set formats you have to follow in these. Annotations are entirely dependent on you. You can write them in any style you want. Just make sure you do not use informal language.

• The MLA style citations are perhaps the most popular ones used in most colleges and universities. In these, the main idea is to highlight the author of the essay. Once you are done with citing the source in the MLA style, you start adding the annotations.


• The other citation style is the APA format. The APA format is also very commonly used. When you start off in college, you are mostly asked to use this style before going on to using the MLA style. The APA style uses less hanging indentations.


• Most students get confused about how long the annotation should be. The annotations are generally between a hundred to three hundred words. It all depends on the work you are citing and the topic. But in many universities and colleges, the professors have their own formats and give you their own desired length of annotations. So, it is always better to confirm from them before submitting the work.


• You can include a bunch of things in an annotation. You can start off with mentioning where you got the source from and told a bit about it. Then you can tell why the source is good for your paper and you can even mention some of its negative points. A good ending will include your own personal views about the source.