How to Write Website Bibliographies

Write website bibliographies to give credit to a website for the information used in your own document.

Writers of books, reports, and papers often do extensive research to back up the claims they make. All of these data and research--from other published books, magazine articles, or websites--when used even as knowledge and background information to create their new work, must be cited by the writer.

The writers of the new book or paper need to write references or bibliographies to note where this substantiating information came from.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Determine the website references that need to be cited. Websites offer information, just as a book does. Writers use this information to enforce or validate their data when writing a new book. Keep track of these websites as you visit them.

2. Open a new Word file (or whatever software program you use). Make a list, as you do the research, of each website visited. Include the complete URL, or more commonly known as the website address.
   
   An example would be a website beginning with www. or http://. The domain name of the website comes next (for example, ehow). This is then followed by .com or .org or whatever other relevant extension.

3. On the next line, type in the website's name and subtitle, if relevant, such as eHow (name), How to Do Just About Everything (subtitle).
   
   With the website's URL and common name, you have the beginning of the website bibliography.

4. While still at the website that you need to write a citation for, type any additional information into your Word file that you find on the exact web page you gathered information from. This might be author name, if provided; an article or blog name; date you accessed the website.

5. The completed website bibliography's parts would include:
   
   website name, subtitle. "Name of Article." Name of author. Date accessed.

6. The completed website bibliography would look like this:
   
   eHow, How to Do Just About Anything. "How to Write Website Bibliographies." Peggy Hazelwood. www.the website URL here (accessed July 3, 2000).

Tips & Warnings

• Use attribution. Cover your bases and give credit for research and quotes you use in books, reports, and papers.
• In Step 6, the real URL would appear but it's not possible to include that within this article.

[zapped]

on 12/22/2009 Thanks for another usable tip!

[vallain]

on 7/6/2009 How to make a bibliographic citation for an online site was a frequently asked question in the library. Students and writers will appreciate this help.

[jennjessop]

on 7/2/2009 Thanks for the info! I remember learning how to do a book and magazine bibliographies but I don't think we ever went over websites. Thanks for the great info! 5 stars!

[Gottaloveit]

on 7/2/2009 Boy, I'm behind the times! I forget to credit websites all the time. Thanks for the great tips for creating a website bibliography!

[joanhaines]

on 7/2/2009 Crediting sources on the internet is sorely lacking. This article will help remedy that.