Developing Your Ideas: Annotations can help you focus your own ideas on a subject through critically analyzing and articulating your ideas about other treatments of the subject.

Keeping Track: Annotations can form the basis of a research bibliography for a large project, tracking what you've been reading, which sources you’ve found useful and why.

Active Reading: Annotations make you think carefully about what you are reading: can you sum up an article or a book in a few sentences and state why the source is or isn't useful to your project?.

Your annotations should be written in complete sentences or brief paragraphs. The length is related to the purpose and intended audience of the annotated bibliography. If it is for someone else, what will your reader need to know in order to decide whether or not to read the text for him/herself? If it is for you, how can you sum up the work so that later you will remember your ideas about it? Be brief, clear, and succinct to convey the maximum useful information in your annotation.Īnnotations can vary in length from very brief (a sentence or less) to very detailed (a page or more), but the average length of annotations is around 4-5 sentences or 150 words. The key to writing a good annotation is to consider who will use it. Most annotated bibliographies include a combination of descriptive and evaluative comments.

the place of this text in the field of research covered in your bibliography.

the usefulness of the text for your research project or for further study.

the qualifications and authority of the author and publisher.

the intended audience, the level of difficulty.

its accuracy, currency, and/or completeness.the strengths and weaknesses of the text.It implies an answer to the question: 'Why am I including this source in my bibliography?' a quotation or two to illustrate the style, tone, treatment of the subjectĮvaluation: a critical annotation includes an analysis of the work.a description of the contents and a statement of the main argument (i.e., what is the book about?).

The annotations tend to do one or both of two things:ĭescription: a descriptive annotation provides a brief overview of the text. An annotated bibliography describes the field of research on a topic and should include sources that reflect the range of approaches to the subject. Long annotated bibliographies are often subdivided into sections with subheadings.Īnnotated bibliographies are very useful to organize the research for a project and are a very common type of assignment. The arrangement is generally alphabetical order by author's last name. The standard format is to give each citation followed by its annotation.

An annotated bibliography gives for each citation some commentary from the person who has compiled the list of works. A bibliography is a list of works on a subject that gives complete publication information and is formatted according to one of several documentation styles (MLA, APA, etc.).

Annotated bibliography of an article