What is an annotated bibliography? What was your first reaction knowing that you have to write one for your class?

Since annotated bibliography writing is not so common for most students and even experienced writers, it has been practiced for decades now.

In one way of another, it is still very useful for most of us but only a few knows how to write it well.

For your next experience in writing, you have to learn the ways on writing an effective annotated bibliography and your first step is to know what it is all about.

Likely unfamiliar to many, writing an annotated bibliography comes up at least once as part of every student’s school assignments. It can be requested as both a standalone task or as a standalone assignment.

As the name implies, an annotated bibliography provides annotations of various research sources on a given topic. These comments can contain any number of things, all of which usually dictated by the purpose of the piece. Most of the time, annotations are intended to analyze, reflect, critique, summarize or evaluate the source material.

Everyone is very familiar with bibliography. And just like it, the list of each research sources is arranged alphabetically. An annotated bibliography includes a summary of each gathered data.

Also, each source is being evaluated briefly and other related and relevant information is also included. Annotated bibliography is not just an ordinary writing that one won’t take it seriously.

Depending on the research, it can be a big assignment in your part which requires deep research and evaluation. That is why most students find it difficult to write their research projects without needing a helping hand.

So why do students need to do them? Because of their nature, annotated bibliography can be used to get students to review available literature on a particular subject, demonstrate their breadth of knowledge in the field, discover the variety of research materials available, single out sources relevant to a specific topic and organize these sources for further research.

There are various purposes on writing an annotated bibliography. It always depend on your research assignment. For some reason, it serves as to discuss further what you’ve just learned while reading.

Also, it organize different source of information for the benefit of other students or researchers about the subject that you have. Lastly, it illustrates the scope of each sources and the literature of the study.

Somehow, it has an important role in research writing and a lot of time and effort should be implemented in writing an annotated bibliography.

The general format for annotated bibliographies is to list down the biographical details for a source, then follow it with the required annotation. This can run from a single sentence statement to one of a few hundred words (usually between 100 to 200) – just enough to cover whatever types of annotations are requested. Like all types of student writing, of course, it’s always best to create your annotated bibliographies with the help of an effective writing software, especially one that’s geared for formal academic composition.

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Category: Writing
Keywords: annotated bibliography, annotations, bibliography