1%

References and Bibliographies

References and bibliographies usually appear in longer reports. In shorter reports, it is often much easier to give attribution right where it occurs in the text. However, you will find that you don't need to cite sources as often in shorter reports.

Citing your sources is not just a matter of giving credit where it is due. It is also a way to establish credibility with your audience. What you are saying is that the information in your report was not just pulled out of thin air. It was bolstered by this research, by those findings, and by these facts. It is also an opportunity to tell your readers where they can find more information.

You can cite your sources in one of two ways:

  1. By creating a list of references

  2. By creating a bibliography

The list of references, or bibliography, goes in a separate section at the end of the report, but before any attachments or appendixes.

Whether you use a list of references or bibliography, make sure that you title it accordingly. For references, you can call it either, simply, "References" or "List of References." You can simply call a bibliography a "Bibliography."

Lists of references and bibliographies are similar, but not quite the same. References have numbers next to them, and those numbers are placed in the text at the appropriate location. Bibliographies are ordered alphabetically by the primary authors name. They can contain more than just the works that were referenced. In other words, a bibliography is more of a recommended reading list.

Rules for References and Bibliographies

The underlying rule for writing references or bibliographies is clarity and consistency. Readers should be able to glance at a reference and instantly understand who said it, in what context, and where they can find it. If the basic structure of each entry is identical, it is easier for the reader to interpret them and extract the information they need.

Later on in this lesson, we are going to give you specific instructions on how to tailor references to a particular type of work, but they are really just modified versions of the same basic structure. That structure should include the following information:


To make each section in the list easier to grasp, we try to isolate them.

For references, titles of works are usually set in italics, publishing information enclosed in parentheses. In bibliographies, each section is separated by a period.

Below is the basic reference for a book:


Notice how easy the information is to understand.

Now, the same book in a bibliography:


As you can see, each entry has a slightly different design, but the layout is pretty much the same, and they are both incredibly easy to grasp.



]]>