How do I... - Thursday 06 June 2019
How to write a bibliography?
What is it for?
A bibliography is the list of the documents you used to write a paper or dissertation.
It has two purposes:
-
demonstrating the quality of your work: your arguments are backed by your research
-
allowing the verification of your work: your reader might be interested in some of your sources and look for the document that inspired you
Where to place it?
A bibliography is generally placed at the end of your paper. You can also insert a shorter bibliography at the end of each part or chapter.
How to organize references?
A bibliography must follow a structure, which can be either:
-
chronological
-
thematic: you can use the different parts of your paper
-
by document type: first books, then articles, etc...
In any case, references are listed alphabetically by author.
How to present references?
References are displayed following a norm: several norms exist.
Whichever style you choose, stick to it for the whole bibliography.
You can see examples in our guide "Writing a bibliography" to see different styles of bibliography for citations for books, articles, online articles, and Websites:
Zotero is a very powerful tool to write a bibliography. Watch our tutorial video on Moodle:
