Annotated Bibliography In The Blink Of An Eye
First, it’s worthwhile to figure out what exactly is the annotation. Many students face difficulties trying to understand how to do annotated bibliography.
Annotation isn’t just a brief description of a book or an article. Annotation should allow the reader to get enough information and understand whether they want to read it or not. Your task is to explain whether this book, website or article is useful for him. On the Internet, you can find some services that allow you not to write annotations by yourself. Thanks to the annotated bibliography generator, you just need to choose the necessary style and bibliographic list, which you want to format in the right way.
Annotation is different from abstract. Abstract is a description, without any details. Annotation implies a certain criticism and a detailed review of some characteristic features of this material. It becomes clear if we analyze main types of the paper–descriptive, informative, analytical or critical annotations.
To write an annotated bibliography, you need to pay attention to the differences of this type of bibliography from the usual straightforward ones. In this case, you add a paragraph with a short description to each source. Typically, the length of the description is 100 to 200 words.
An annotated bibliography may intend different goals, depending on your task. This can be a literary review of a subject, or several theses about it. This can be your study of a book or article, as well as a list of sources that other experts used while considering the same topic.
As mentioned above, there are several types of bibliographies.
- Descriptive and informative.
These types are somewhat similar to abstract, since such a bibliography demonstrates the advantages of using a particular source for a particular study, and also describes its features. Also here is an author’s opinion without detailed examination of their theses and arguments.
- Analytical and critical.
To write a bibliography in a critical way, you need to analyze the source, its advantages and disadvantages. In this case, special attention should be paid to the opinion of the author, to understand whether it’s useful for a particular work.
In practice, the latter is used most often.
Particular attention should be paid to citation style. This is what determines your annotated bibliography format. Since this question often causes difficulties, be sure to ask your lecturer which style of citation is better: APA, Chicago, or MLA.