Blog on Annotated Bibliography in APA Format

What Annotated Bibliography is?

            Before getting into more specific and technical details, it is vital to understand, what annotated bibliography is. In general, when information is taken or paraphrased from any source, it is cited and references in the paper to give credit to the original authors and creators of the content. However, annotated bibliography is a different thing; it is actually a list of references which comes along with brief analysis and summary of the text being annotated. This brief analysis and summary is actually called annotation of the reference entry. A reference is typed above, and below part comes with an entry of annotation describing the content of the source.

It is also vital to know that annotated bibliography can be done for a variety of sources, such as books, website articles, news articles, journal articles, etc. In addition, it can be done in different ways, like one method is to do summary annotation, which answers the questions such as who is the author, what topic is being discussed, year of publication, etc. It means that majority part of summary evaluation is like a description. The other method of annotation is evaluation, which also summarizes the source, but it also critically analyzes the source regarding its content. The source is evaluated to see how important the topic is, what details and evidence has been presented, and if it had a clear arguments and conclusion to make. So, when APA format is followed to get this annotation done, it is called annotated bibliography in APA format.

What Steps to Cover in Writing an Annotated Bibliography in APA Format

            Every process has few steps, and annotated bibliography in APA format also comes with some important steps to follow. The good thing is that when these steps are properly followed, they help to make a correct annotated bibliography with given requirements in APA format. So, here are few steps to follow in this regard:

1. The first step is to find out the relevant source to be annotated. One must understand the fact that if instructor has asked them to write annotated bibliography of books, then they cannot write annotation of journal articles. The instructor does give different kind of instructions in this regard. Some would say to produce a variety of sources in the annotated bibliography, but some others would instruct to annotate certain sources. So, you have to carefully read the instructions of your instructor so that you can find a relevant and valid source for your annotated bibliography. Moreover, the topic should also be in line with the instruction. For instance, if your instructor has asked to find a topic about social issues, then you cannot take a topic about political issues.

2. The second step is citing the source in word document, and writing down its reference with given APA format so that you can write its annotation below. At this step, the most critical thing is to follow the APA format. When APA citation and referencing is done, the next thing would be to analyze and summarize the source.

3. In this step, you need to read your source thoroughly so that you can take the overall theme and idea of the source. For instance, if a journal article is being annotated, you need to read portions of its major sections such as abstract, introduction, methodology, discussion, as well as, conclusion. If you are annotating a book, it is not possible to read all the pages of the book for annotation of few words. So, the method is to read out the major ideas of different chapters, and then analyzing and summarizing those facts in the annotation. You need to be quite focused and attentive in this step because if you won’t have proper focus, you won’t be able to annotate the source in proper manner.

4. At the last step, you need to end your annotation with a viable conclusion to help a reader to understand what has been detailed in the source, and what the conclusion to look at is. It is vital to mention here that one should always write an annotation in simple and understandable words so that every reader can get the idea without any confusion.

Final Words

            The above given steps and information is good enough to write annotated bibliography in APA format. Even, the basic information is good enough to write annotated bibliography in any other format. However, to make things clearer for readers to see how annotated bibliography looks like in the APA format, and what is included in the title part, analysis part, etc. here is a sample of the annotated bibliography with APA format for a journal article: