Before writing your research paper, your professor may require you to write an annotated bibliography. The reason why many people fail here is that they don’t know what it entails! It is that paper that gives a brief overview of available research on a certain topic. This requires you to summarize the resources in your research assessing their value so that they can ultimately reflect their value to the paper.
Each source is written on its own; below it is a paragraph and citation. Below are considerations before you start writing your annotated bibliography.
What is the Purpose
With this at the finger tips, you will compile an annotated bibliography to convince the researcher to think about the quality and relevance of the material on that particular topic. Here you will be able to assess if the information you gave, met the topic’s requirements. Besides, you will be able to know if the information is gotten from an academic and reliable source.
Format
This primarily relies on the requirements of the professor. Below is an order in which the format should take care of.
- Details of citation: they should be set out in a similar style as that of the reference list
- A brief sentence explaining the main focus and purpose of the work
- A summary of the theory, findings of the research and the argument. For instance, you can think of the following; what is the intended audience, which subject will be covered, which are the major arguments to be supported, what are the research methods, what conclusions did you arrive at and what special features can you talk about?
- Show the reliability of the test, how credible the author is and argument strength.
- Finalize this with an evaluative comment taking into account how the study will fit into the research topic.
Styles of Writing
An annotated bibliography is a piece of academic writing which should thus follow the general rules of academic writing. Some of the rules are as follows:
- Ensure your work is arranged in alphabetical order
- Write paragraph wise of approximately 150 words
- Sentences should be written in full using academic writing approach
- Apply transitional words such as: also, moreover, furthermore, etc.
- Mention the only significant details in your summary
- Don’t appear repetitive
- Avoid cross referencing. For instance, avoid using any in- text referencing since you are writing about that single reference.