Term paper bibliography
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Term paper bibliography is a list of sources that have been consulted while writing the assignment. It appears in the last page of an assignment. The page in which it is written is also known as references or works cited page. There are different styles of citing the sources. Some of the famous styles are APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago / Turabian etc. The list of consulted sources are called by different names in different citation styles For example if you are formatting the assignment using the MLA style then the list of consulted sources would be known as â€˜works citedâ€™.
This list is written in the alphabetical order. Each source begins with the last name of the author. There are different ways of writing the references for different kinds of sources in all the citation styles. This means that the information about books would be given in a different way than the information given about the magazine or journals. The consulted websites would be written in yet another different form.
While giving the information about the sources, remember to first list the books then the magazines and journals and then the websites. There may be two different ways of writing information about a source within the same style. If this is the case then ask your tutor to advice you on which format you should adopt. Be consistent with one way of citing rather than mixing different ways together.
Like the other pages the reference page should also be double-spaced. The heading for example, â€˜referencesâ€™ or â€˜works citedâ€™ etc. should be written in the center of the page. The page in which this list of sources appears is numbered too unlike the title page where no page number is inserted.
While researching do not just pay attention to the material you are gathering but also the sources from where you are gathering it. If you are returning one of the consulted books to the library in order to issue another book. Do not return the book without noting down details about it. This is because you cannot afford to omit any of the desired details of the sources in the references page.
Term paper bibliography contains to the point information and is bereft of any frills or flowery language. No matter which style is being used, while citing a book one should give information about the author / authors / editor / editors, title of the book, year of publication, the place where it has been published and the name of the publication house. The edition of the book except if it is the first edition should be mentioned too. While citing the magazines or journals, you should mention the name of the author of the article you have cited, the title of the article, the title of the magazine, year of publication and the volume number. While citing websites you should mention the author whose work you are citing or the name of the website or the organization to which the website belongs, the year of the creation of that website, the date when you retrieved information from that website and the URL of the website.