How to Write a Bibliography, Endnotes, Footnotes & Citations

At college the requirement to write essays means learning new writing guidelines and style requirements. These guidelines are necessary to show that you have performed the requisite research and that you aren't plagiarizing others' work. Many courses request a specific referencing style such as Harvard or APA. In all instances, essays will require some kind of referencing, which includes one or more of the following: bibliography, endnotes, footnotes and citations. Understanding how each of these methods work will help you write your essays correctly and avoid penalty points for incorrect or inadequate references.

Instructions

    • 1

      Writing your bibliography: In the context of a college essay, your bibliography is a list of books and other written sources you have used to provide information for the essay. These are often listed alphabetically by author's surname. You should always include the name of the author(s) and translator (if your book or website is a translation). Also include the name of the publication, the publishing house, the year of publication and the edition number if it isn't a first edition. The precise order and format of these details will vary depending on which referencing system you have been asked to use. It will also vary depending on whether you are referencing a book, an article from a journal, a web page or some other type of resource.

    • 2

      Writing your endnotes: Endnotes should be written on a separate page at the end of the essay and their function is to add detail about sources that have been quoted or summarized in the body of the essay. After quoting or summarizing part of a text, add a superscript number and write the corresponding endnote with the same number. All endnotes should appear numerically rather than alphabetically and they should include the page number or numbers you have directly referenced.

    • 3

      Inserting footnotes: Footnotes are like endnotes but they appear at the bottom of each page in the footer instead of separately at the end of the essay. If you are using footnotes you do not need to have endnotes, as they should cover the same information, specifically providing page references.

    • 4

      Using citations: Citations appear in the body of the essay to attribute quotes, ideas and concepts that are not your own to the relevant author(s). Unless you are using footnotes or endnotes, your citations should include the author's surname. If you are referencing several works by the same author it is also helpful to insert the year of publication. The citation should be written within parentheses and be placed in the text just after the related quote or paraphrased section.

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