(I know some of the images are broken; will fix soon!)
CITATION FORMATTING
You may use MLA or APA style for your bibliographic citations, depending on your major and the style you’re most comfortable with. Even if you think you know the style by memory, I recommend that you look up the rules for formatting citations to double check that you’ve formatted every aspect correctly, including the capitalization of titles, what parts should be italicized, how to include volume and issue info, and so on.
You can find this information in any recently published research handbook, but I highly recommend this one: Research and Documentation Online. Look for the section on the contents page that corresponds to the citation style you want to use (MLA for Humanities or APA for Social Sciences) and put your mouse over “Documenting Sources.” A drop down menu will appear that includes an option for bibliographic citations. In the MLA section, the menu item is “MLA list of works cited,” and in the APA section, the menu item is “APA list of references.” Follow the appropriate link and carefully read the information at the top of the page, the general guidelines, and the specific guidelines for your type of source.
You might also try an online bibliographic citation formatting site, such as EasyBib.com, Citation Machine, or BibMe. But keep in mind that these will not produce correctly formatted citations if you don’t enter the information correctly and specify the right type of source.
Also see these handouts on this site: Citing Sources in MLA Format and Citing Sources in APA Format.
REGULAR BIBLIOGRAPHY
Start your bibliography on a new page at the bottom of your document. If you’re using MLA format, center the title Works Cited at the top with no bold, italics, quotation marks, or underlining. If you’re using APA format, use the title References instead.
Type each bibliographic entry without adding returns or tabs. Word will automatically format your entries correctly after you follow the next step.
Select the entire bibliography (keyboard shortcut: ctrl-a on Windows or command-a on a Mac). If the bibliography isn’t already double-spaced, make it so (keyboard shortcut: control-2 on Windows or command-2 on a Mac).
Change the paragraph formatting for your bibliography page to “hanging indent” by following these steps: go to the “Format” menu, drag down to “Paragraph,” and then choose “Hanging” from the special indentation menu.
This will format your entries with the first line flush to the left and the rest of the lines indented, so that you don’t have to do this with manual tabs. Like this:
Note: This entry is in MLA format.
The reason for formatting bibliography entries with hanging indent format is so that readers can scan the left side of the page and easily find authors you referred to in the paper.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Follow the same steps as above, entering each bibliographic citation without adding returns or tabs. Skip a line below each citation and enter your annotation. Put each part of the annotation in a separate paragraph, with a header in bold. (See the relevant assignment or calendar entry for a description of what kind of content your annotation should contain.)
When you’ve entered all citations and annotations, select the first citation and apply hanging indent format to it. (Go to the “Format” menu, drag down to “Paragraph,” and then choose “Hanging” from the special indentation menu.)
Then select the second citation and choose Repeat Paragraph Formatting from the Edit menu (or use the keyboard shortcuts: ctrl-y on Windows or command-y on a Mac).
Select each remaining citation and repeat the formatting command for each of them.
The end result will be a bibliography page with citations in hanging indent format and annotations in regular format with no indentations, like this:
Note: The citation on this sample is in APA format.
