The Annotated-bibliography System Should Be Used For Which Three Things?

MLA Style Annotated Bibliography | Format & Examples

Published on July 13, 2021 past Jack Caulfield.

An annotated bibliography is a special consignment that lists sources in a fashion like to the MLA Works Cited list, but providing an note for each source giving extra data.

You might be assigned an annotated bibliography equally office of the inquiry process for a paper, or as an private assignment.

MLA provides guidelines for writing and formatting your annotated bibliography. An example of a typical annotation is shown below.

Example of an MLA source note

Kenny, Anthony. A New History of Western Philosophy: In Four Parts. Oxford UP, 2010.

Wide history of Western philosophy from the aboriginal Greeks to the nowadays day. Divided into four periods—ancient, medieval, early modern, and modernistic—each section begins with a chronological overview of the key thinkers, followed past chapters dedicated to each significant subfield in the period: metaphysics, political philosophy, God, etc. Kenny generally provides thorough and fair assessments of the major philosophers' work, but is pointedly dismissive of Derrida and other disquisitional theorists, significantly weakening the book's coverage of "postmodern" philosophy.

You can create and manage your annotated bibliography with Scribbr's free MLA Commendation Generator. Cull your source blazon, retrieve the details, and click "Add annotation."

MLA format for annotated bibliographies

The listing should exist titled either "Annotated Bibliography" or "Annotated List of Works Cited." You may be told which title to use; "bibliography" is unremarkably used for a list that also includes sources y'all didn't cite in your paper or that isn't connected to a paper at all.

Sources are ordinarily organized alphabetically, like in a normal Works Cited listing, merely can instead be organized chronologically or by field of study depending on the purpose of the assignment.

The source information is presented and formatted in the same way as in a normal Works Cited entry:

Double-spaced
Left-aligned
0.5 inch hanging indent

The annotation follows on the next line, also double-spaced and left-aligned. The whole notation is indented 1 inch from the left margin to distinguish information technology from the 0.5 inch hanging indent of the source entry.

If the note is only one paragraph long, at that place's no additional indent for the start of the paragraph.
If there are two or more than paragraphs, indent the beginning line of each paragraph, including the outset, an boosted one-half-inch (so those lines are indented i.five inches in total).

MLA annotated bibliography

Length and content of annotations

MLA gives some guidelines for writing the annotations themselves. They comprehend how concise you need to exist and what exactly you should write most your sources.

Phrases or full sentences?

MLA states that it's acceptable to employ concise phrases rather than grammatically consummate sentences in your annotations.

While yous shouldn't write this way in your main text, it's acceptable in annotations because the subject area of the phrase is clear from the context. Information technology's as well fine to use full sentences instead, if you adopt.

Broad history of Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the present day.
Kenny presents a broad history of Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the present day.

Always use total sentences if your teacher requires y'all to do so, though.

How many paragraphs?

MLA states that annotations usually aim to be concise and thus are merely one paragraph long. However, it'due south acceptable to write multiple-paragraph annotations if you need to.

If in dubiety, aim to continue your annotations curt, but use multiple paragraphs if longer annotations are required for your assignment.

Descriptive, evaluative, or reflective annotations?

MLA states that annotations tin can describe or evaluate sources, or do both. They shouldn't get into too much depth quoting or discussing minor details from the source, but aim to write about it in broad terms.

Read more about the differences between descriptive, evaluative, and reflective annotations here. If you're non sure what kind of annotations you lot need, consult your assignment guidelines or inquire your instructor.