At times, while writing an academic paper, the instructions require you to include an annotated bibliography. For this, you need to know what are the parts of an annotated bibliography. Commonly known as a list of books, articles, or other works; an annotated bibliography encompasses expressive and evaluative comments on the citations included in the paper. These comments are called annotations.

Thus, an annotated bibliography is nothing but a list of citations to original works with each citation having a short evaluative paragraph, which is an annotation. This paragraph is mostly around 150-200 words. Its purpose is to convey the preciseness and relevance of citations to the readers.

What to Take Care of while Writing an Annotated Bibliography

It can be puzzling to write such a bibliography if you have never seen one or its writing instructions are unclear to you. Thus, you first need to be clear about the instructions given to you.

To get started, you should be able to define and identify your own formula for writing an annotated bibliography. You should also keep the goal in your mind, which is of making an impression on the readers regarding how you selected these referenced works such as books, articles, case studies, and research papers and how they are useful for your research.

Then, you should strictly adhere to the academic style of writing style and organize all citations in an alphabetical manner.

Annotated Bibliography’s Main Sections

The main focus of yours should be on linking the citations with your research. You should convey them such that the reader knows how they have added value to your research either by supporting or contradicting the same along with how you applied the verdicts to your own paper.

Following are the main parts of an annotated bibliography:

  • A citation that is as per the rules of the selected style guide such as Chicago, Harvard, and MLA. You should stick to the right format and check twice with the style guide rules.
  • The cited work’s purpose, which is typically a concise statement to write. This is where you can even include the author’s scope as well as the researcher’s hypothesis.
  • Your reading experience, which says how easy it was for you to understand the original work. You should also write about the target audience of the paper and what is your perspective on the same. At this point, most writers make a grave mistake of including annotations for works that they have not read at all. This is detrimental to the goal of writing an annotated bibliography, which is to prove that your citations are well-researched.
  • An assessment of the original work, so that the annotation does not seem to a summary. So, consider adding your analytical perspective about it. In other words, you can include the research’s restrictions or drawbacks.
  • Your research inferences, if any, and how important are they for your writeup.

With these parts of an annotated bibliography, it will be now easy for you to write them. So, are you ready to write such citations?