Write With Me #7 - Bibliography

Writing the bibliography is the part where so many students fall down at the last hurdle and I'm here to tell you that it really isn't anywhere near as complicated as it can seem.

First piece of advice and the most important thing is to write this as you're going.

You want to be writing your bibliography from the time you start doing your research (remember when I told you to make a note with full details about Author, Title, Year, etc.?). This will save you so much time and heartbreak.

I like to keep all of this information in a spreadsheet (Google Sheets is great for this) so that when it comes time to write the proper bibliography I can easily sort it into alphabetical order and spend less time worrying where P is in relation to N in the alphabet.

Because I will forget, and I will panic and that will cost me minutes that could better be spent elsewhere (like rewarding myself with a cup of coffee for finishing).

Writing your bibliography as you go also means that you can see if you’re trying to do too much with your work (for a 2’500 word essay shouldn’t normally have more than 15 sources) or not including enough (for a 5’000 word essay if you’re just getting 10 sources including the material you’re looking at then you’ve not got enough). This is something that kept me on track with my essays, especially during my third year when I wanted to talk about so much and wrote 2’500 words out of a 3’000 word essay and had only looked at 1 of the 3 texts I was meant to. I realised all of my sources so far were for that first text and I was lacking in the others, so, I went back to the drawing board.

It’s also a good habit to get into. If anyone is reading over your work (or a section of it) you have the research to hand to say “ah I’ve looked at these things already” and they don’t then spend time going over what you already know.

So, now that we've covered why it's important...

How To Write A Bibliography

So you’ve come to the end of your essay and you’ve now got to write your bibliography. I’m telling you now that it’s a bad way to do it, leaving everything until the last minute ensures that you’ll have a struggle ahead of you.

You want to start writing it as you’re going – make a note of every book, article, journal and website you’re visiting. You’ll want the author, date, title, place published and publisher at least.

Crime Fiction Bibliography Example

An idea is to group by theme first before you start looking at alphabetical order or any other sort of organisation. This means that you have a good idea of the types, usefulness and importance of your sources first instead of being worried about how many there are.

Also if you're using Google Sheets like I recommend, then you can always organise by alphabetical order later.

If you’re writing an essay with an argument as the focus (e.g – The characters Aziraphale and Crowley are not essential to the plot of Good Omens. Discuss.) then you’ll want to probably group these by “for” and “against” sources. If you’re writing a comparative essay (e.g- Compare three of Chaucer’s Tales, looking at how they represent the views and culture of the time in which they wre written) you would do better grouping sources by something along the lines of “general – worldviews”, “general – culture”, “Chaucer” and then having sections for each of the three tales you choose.

Including Comments

One of the reasons I recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of your sources is that you can make comments on these. If you're going to be asked to make an annotated bibliography then this part is key.

Make a note of how important the source was, do you agree or disagree with it, did it back your argument up or go against it, was it accurate? Make a note if the language made it difficult to follow. Evaluate the source - don't just think that because it's published it must be good. You can criticise critics.

So you’ve written your bibliography as you go, have enough comments to turn it into a nice annotated bibliography if that’s required and it’s all nicely grouped into catagories. Now you just need to format it correctly for your examiner. I’m required to use Harvard referencing so I double check everything is correct according to that, put it all in alphabetical order and then it’s ready to add to the end of my essay and submit.

Some tips

• If you’re using anything online put a link straight away to whatever it is, take a screenshot of the page or leave it open as another tab just in case the website gets updated, taken down or moved.

• There are reference creators online, if you’re really stuck you can use them to help you format it.

• Make sure you’ve got a reference for every quote you’re using. Don’t leave them floating without something to refer back to.

• You can use footnotes in your essay and come back to adding in text citations later if you’re in the flow of things and don’t want to stop. Just make sure to replace these later!

• If you’re stuck and you can’t find anything then ask for help. I asked my lecturer about using comic books without page numbers and was directed how to create better citations in text for that.

• Try to have a balance between books, websites, articles and so on. Each type has it’s own pros and cons; books can be out of date, websites can be created by anyone etc.