How to Write a Bibliography for a School Report
Bibliographies are an important part of your school report. They allow your teacher to check your work, verify your sources, and make sure that you haven't committed plagiarism. They also allow you to keep track of your sources so that you can refer to them later if necessary. Writing a bibliography for your school report isn't difficult. If you keep careful track of your sources throughout your research, you won't have any trouble writing one at all.
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Instructions
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Record your research. A bibliography does not just cite the information used in a school report. It documents every source that you read during the research phase. While doing your research, take close notes of what you read, who the author or authors are, who published the work, where it was published, and when it was published. This is all information that you will need when you sit down to write your bibliography.
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Learn the style. There are several common styles for writing bibliographies. The most popular are APA, MLA, and Chicago style. APA is the style of the American Psychological Association and is primarily used in reports on the social sciences. MLA is the style of the Modern Language Association; the Chicago style is that of the University of Chicago. Both are mostly used in humanities bibliographies. Before you begin writing your bibliography, find out which your teacher prefers. Refer to a style or citation guide to know the proper format for each type of bibliography entry you have.
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Format your source information. Take all the publication information that you have from your research phase. Put your information into the appropriate order, as determined by your style guide. Make sure that your titles are in quotations, underlined, or italicized, as appropriate.
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Alphabetize your bibliography. Your bibliography should be in alphabetical order by the first author's last name. If the work you are referencing is a work with no author, or a work whose author is not known, alphabetize by the first significant word (the first word after "the" or "an") of the title.
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Proofread your bibliography. Go through your bibliography looking for spelling errors, typos or formatting mistakes. Read through the bibliography two or three times very closely.
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