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 will find in this guide from the University of Montreal (in French) many additional details that may be useful, including the different typographical rules in French and English.

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 in APA style:

Zotero is a very powerful tool to write a bibliography. Watch our tutorial video on Moodle: