The big idea

A bibliography is an organized list of all the places you got the information you used in your research paper. Believe it or not, there's a pretty strict format for writing these things up. Every comma, every colon, every period has to be in the right place.

Before you begin

Be sure that you keep track of all necessary information AS YOU ARE DOING YOUR RESEARCH. Jot down the title of the book or magazine, author, publisher, date, and so on. Writing this stuff down as you go is one heck of a lot easier than going back to the library later on to hunt it all up.

How to do it

Remember to list your bibliography entries on their own bibliography page in alphabetical order according to the first word in each entry. NOTE: Do everything exactly as I lay it out for you here. All you have to do is plug in new titles, publishers, and so on. EVEN USE ITALICS THE SAME WAY. The only things you don't have to put in are the labels "book with one author," "web site," and so on. Other than that, though, every comma counts. That's not just my way; it's the official way.

1. BOOK BY ONE AUTHOR
   1. Tompkins, Jane. How to Drive Your Students Crazy. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1995.
2. BOOK BY TWO AUTHORS
   1. Flob, Bob, and Ben Dover. Cruel Tricks to Play on Your Teacher. New York: Ballantine, 1986.
3. BOOK WITH AN EDITOR
   1. Lomeli, Barney, ed. Hotbed of Insanity:
   2. Stories of Life as a Fifth-Grade Teacher. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1995.
4. UNSIGNED ARTICLE FROM A MAGAZINE
   1. "Brooms." The World Book Encyclopedia. 1991.
5. SIGNED ARTICLE FROM AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
   1. Singe, Vernal. "Flubber." Encyclopedia Brittanica. 1984.
1. ARTICLE IN A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
   1. Zyzzyx, John. "The Best Day of the Twentieth Century." Harper's Jan. 1993: 39-58.
   1. WEB SITE
      1. Klingensmith, Michael. "Top Five Movie Hairdos of All Time.<http://us.imdb.com/toptens/hair.html>. Accessed 24 October 1999.
   2. COMPUTER ENCYCLOPEDIA
      1. "Vulcan Mind Meld." The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. Danbury: Grolier, 1995.

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An Example

Here's how a bibliography should look. NOTE THAT EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE FIRST LINE OF EACH ENTRY IS INDENTED. This is called a "hanging indent," and it's the OPPOSITE of what you're used to.