Writing Homework Help

Annotated Bibliography

FORMAT: Typed and double-spaced in MLA format.

OBJECTIVE: A good analysis provides a valuable point of view, a way of seeing, a way of interpreting some element of the primary source (the novel) that otherwise may appear random or unexplainable. Your job is to make the implicit explicit.

Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for a research project. Just collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, but when you have to write annotations for each source, you’re forced to read each source more carefully. You begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information. Writing an annotated bibliography can help you gain a good perspective on what is being said about your topic. By reading and responding to a variety of sources on a topic, you’ll start to see what the issues are, what people are arguing about, and you’ll then be able to develop your own point of view.