How to Write a Bibliography: Formats and Examples

A bibliography is the alphabetical list of sources at the end of your paper that shows readers exactly where your facts, quotations and ideas came from. What you call it, what goes on it and how each entry looks depend on your citation style: APA calls the list References, MLA calls it Works Cited, and Chicago calls it a Bibliography.

This guide covers the whole job. You will get a seven-step process, the page rules for APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18, the same three real sources formatted in all three styles, an annotated entry you can model and a checklist of the mistakes that cost students points.

What Is a Bibliography?

A bibliography is a list of the sources you used to write a paper, with enough detail for a reader to find each one. Every entry answers the same four questions: who created the source, when it came out, what it is called and where a reader can find it.

The word has a broad meaning and a narrow one, and the difference matters for your grade. In the broad sense, a bibliography can include everything you read, even sources you never cited. In the narrow sense used by most college style guides, the list includes only the sources you actually cited in your paper.

Bibliography vs. Reference List vs. Works Cited

The three names describe the same idea, but each style uses its own label and its own rule about what belongs on the list.

APA is the strictest. Its official guide to creating a reference list tells you to use the label “References,” not “Works Cited” or “Bibliography,” and to leave off any work you read during your research but did not cite. MLA takes a middle path: the MLA Style Center’s note on Works Cited, Bibliography and References suggests a separate Works Consulted list for extra reading if your instructor has no objection. For a fuller comparison, see our breakdown of the difference between a bibliography and a works cited page.

How to Write a Bibliography in 7 Steps

To write a bibliography, you collect the details of every source as you research, format each one with your style’s template, put the entries in alphabetical order and set up the page with the right title, spacing and hanging indent.

Step 1: Confirm the Style and Edition

Check the syllabus or assignment sheet for the style and, if it says, the edition. The current editions are APA 7 (2019), MLA 9 (April 2021) and Chicago 18 (2024). Editions matter because the rules change between them. Chicago’s 18th edition, for example, stopped requiring a city of publication for books.

Step 2: Record Source Details as You Research

Save the citation details the moment you open a useful source, not the night before the deadline. Here is what to capture for the three source types students use most.

For webpages, use the date the page was published or last updated. APA specifically warns against using the copyright date in a site’s footer. A free reference manager such as Zotero can store these details for you as you go.

Step 3: Identify What Kind of Source It Is

Format each entry by what the source is, not by how you found it. APA’s reference list guide makes this explicit: a journal article you read online is still cited as a journal article, and you should cite something as a webpage only when no other category fits. The same logic works in MLA and Chicago.

Step 4: Build Each Entry from Your Style’s Template

Fill in your recorded details one element at a time, following your style’s template for that source type. Most errors happen in name order, capitalization, italics and punctuation, so slow down there. The style sections below give full examples.

Step 5: Put the Entries in Alphabetical Order

Alphabetize the entries by the first word of each one, which is usually the first author’s last name. When a source has no author, alphabetize it by its title. Don’t number the entries or sort them by source type unless your instructor asks for that.

Step 6: Format the Page

Start the list on a new page at the end of your paper, center the title and give every entry a hanging indent, which keeps the first line at the left margin and indents every line below it by half an inch.

• Microsoft Word: select your entries, open the Paragraph dialog launcher on the Home tab, choose Hanging under Special, set the By field to 0.5" and select OK. Microsoft’s instructions for creating a hanging indent in Word cover the Windows, Mac and web versions.
• Google Docs: select your entries, go to Format > Align & indent > Indentation options and set Special indent to Hanging. Our guide to MLA format in Google Docs walks through the rest of the page setup.

Spacing is where the styles split. APA and MLA double-space the whole list with no extra blank lines between entries. Chicago papers that follow Turabian single-space each entry and add a blank line between entries.

Step 7: Match the List Against Your In-Text Citations

Every source you cite in your paper needs an entry, and in APA and MLA every entry needs at least one citation in your text. APA calls this a one-to-one correspondence between the text and the reference list. Read through your paper once with the list beside you and tick off each source.

APA Reference List Format and Examples

An APA reference list is titled References, double-spaced and alphabetized, with a 0.5-inch hanging indent. These are the main rules from APA 7 and its reference guide for journal articles, books and book chapters:

• Put “References” in bold, centered at the top of a new page.
• Double-space within and between entries, with no extra blank lines.
• Invert every author’s name and use initials only, as in Dunlosky, J. Put an ampersand (&) before the last author.
• List up to 20 authors. For 21 or more, give the first 19, an ellipsis and then the final author.
• Put the date in parentheses right after the authors.
• Write titles of articles, books and webpages in sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns. Journal names keep title case.
• Italicize titles of works that stand alone, such as books, reports and webpages, plus the journal name and volume number.
• Leave out the publisher’s location.
• End with a DOI written as https://doi.org/ followed by the number whenever the work has one, with no period after it. If a work has both a DOI and a URL, give only the DOI.

Most references don’t need a retrieval date. APA uses one only for a work designed to change over time, such as a social media profile page, when you cite an unarchived version. Fonts are flexible too: APA’s student paper setup guide lists 12-point Aptos, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 12-point Times New Roman and 11-point Georgia among the acceptable choices.

APA Bibliography Examples

Here are the three sources this guide uses throughout, a two-author book, a five-author journal article and a two-author webpage, formatted as an APA reference list. On a real page, each entry would be double-spaced with a hanging indent.

References

Binder, A. J., & Kidder, J. L. (2022). The channels of student activism: How the left and right are winning (and losing) in campus politics today. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226819860.001.0001

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Sidoti, O., & Gottfried, J. (2023, November 16). About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/about-1-in-5-us-teens-whove-heard-of-chatgpt-have-used-it-for-schoolwork/

Notice three APA habits. The book ends with its DOI because APA asks for a DOI on any work that has one. The journal article lists all five authors, while your in-text citation would shorten it to (Dunlosky et al., 2013). The webpage title is italic because the page stands alone, and the date includes the month and day. For more source types, see our APA style guide.

MLA Works Cited Format and Examples

An MLA works cited page is titled Works Cited, centered in plain text, double-spaced and alphabetized, with a 0.5-inch hanging indent. MLA 9 builds every entry from the same nine core elements in a fixed order: author, title of source, title of container, contributor, version, number, publisher, publication date and location.

These are the key rules, as summarized in the Purdue OWL guide to the MLA Works Cited page:

• Center “Works Cited” at the top of a new page, without bold, italics or quotation marks.
• Double-space all entries and don’t add extra space between them.
• Write the first author’s name in full, last name first. Join two authors with “and.” For three or more, give the first author followed by “et al.”
• Use title case. Put shorter works, such as articles and webpages, in quotation marks, and italicize the larger works that contain them.
• Abbreviate months longer than four letters (Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Nov.) and shorten university presses to UP, as in U of Chicago P.
• Leave out the city of publication unless the book came out before 1900, the publisher has offices in more than one country or the publisher is unknown in North America.
• Give a DOI as https://doi.org/ followed by the number when there is one. For a plain URL, you may drop the http:// or https://.
• Add an access date if it helps, especially for undated pages or pages likely to change. It is optional.

MLA Bibliography Examples

Here are the same three sources as an MLA works cited list.

Works Cited

Binder, Amy J., and Jeffrey L. Kidder. The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today. U of Chicago P, 2022.

Dunlosky, John, et al. “Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, vol. 14, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 4-58, https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266.

Sidoti, Olivia, and Jeffrey Gottfried. “About 1 in 5 U.S. Teens Who’ve Heard of ChatGPT Have Used It for Schoolwork.” Pew Research Center, 16 Nov. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/about-1-in-5-us-teens-whove-heard-of-chatgpt-have-used-it-for-schoolwork/.

Compare these with the APA versions. Full first names replace initials, the five-author article shrinks to “Dunlosky, John, et al.,” and the date moves toward the end. The book has no DOI here because MLA describes the version you consulted, and this entry assumes you read the print copy. If you found the article through a database such as JSTOR or ProQuest, add the database name in italics before the DOI as a second container. Pew is both the website and the publisher, so its name appears only once. Our MLA style guide covers in-text citations and more source types.

Chicago Bibliography Format and Examples

A Chicago bibliography is titled Bibliography and goes with the notes-bibliography system, where you cite sources in footnotes or endnotes and list them in full at the end. Chicago’s other system, author-date, uses parenthetical citations and a reference list instead. The 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style came out in 2024, and its list of what’s new in the 18th edition includes four changes that affect your bibliography:

• A place of publication is no longer required for books.
• List up to six authors in an entry. For more than six, list the first three followed by “et al.”
• Repeat an author’s name for each of their works rather than using a 3-em dash.
• You can usually leave the month or season out of journal article citations.

Page layout for student papers comes from Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, which follows Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style’s Shop Talk guide to formatting a Turabian bibliography tells you to center the title Bibliography, leave two blank lines before the first entry, single-space each entry with a blank line between entries and use half-inch hanging indents. That post was written for the 17th edition, so where it suggests a 3-em dash for repeated authors, follow the 18th edition and repeat the name.

Inside each entry, invert only the first author’s name, separate the main parts with periods and use title case. Italicize book and journal titles, put article and webpage titles in quotation marks and include a DOI-based URL for articles you read online. Add an access date only when a page shows no publication or revision date.

Chicago Bibliography Examples

Bibliography

Binder, Amy J., and Jeffrey L. Kidder. The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today. University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Dunlosky, John, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham. “Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1 (2013): 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266.

Sidoti, Olivia, and Jeffrey Gottfried. “About 1 in 5 U.S. Teens Who’ve Heard of ChatGPT Have Used It for Schoolwork.” Pew Research Center, November 16, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/about-1-in-5-us-teens-whove-heard-of-chatgpt-have-used-it-for-schoolwork/.

The book entry matches the one in Chicago’s own notes and bibliography quick guide. All five article authors appear because the list stays under the six-author cutoff, and only the first name is inverted. If your instructor still uses the 17th edition, add the city before the publisher: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.

The Same Article in Chicago Author-Date Style

In author-date style, the year moves up to sit right after the authors and the issue number goes in parentheses.

Dunlosky, John, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham. 2013. “Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14 (1): 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266.

Your in-text citation would read (Dunlosky et al. 2013), with a comma and page number added when you point to a specific passage. Our Chicago style citation guide covers footnotes and shortened notes in detail.

Bibliography Examples Compared: APA vs. MLA vs. Chicago

The quickest way to see what changes between styles is to follow one source through all three. This table tracks the Dunlosky journal article from the examples above.

Two things never change: entries are alphabetized, and each one gets a hanging indent. Once you see the pattern, switching styles mostly means moving the date, changing the name format and fixing the capitalization.

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is a bibliography in which each citation is followed by a short paragraph, the annotation, that summarizes and evaluates the source. Cornell University Library’s guide to preparing an annotated bibliography describes the annotation as usually about 150 words, both descriptive and evaluative, and meant to tell readers about the relevance, accuracy and quality of the source.

A strong annotation does three jobs:

• Summarize the source’s main argument or findings and its scope.
• Evaluate the author’s authority, the evidence and any limits.
• Connect the source to your project or compare it with your other sources.

The citation itself follows your normal style. In APA, the annotation starts on a new line below the entry, and the whole paragraph is indented 0.5 inch. MLA lets you write annotations as phrases or full sentences, usually no longer than one paragraph, and suggests titling the list Annotated Bibliography or Annotated List of Works Cited.

Annotated Bibliography Example in APA

Sidoti, O., & Gottfried, J. (2023, November 16). About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/about-1-in-5-us-teens-whove-heard-of-chatgpt-have-used-it-for-schoolwork/

Sidoti and Gottfried report findings from a Pew Research Center online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, conducted through Ipsos from September 26 to October 23, 2023. About one in five teens who had heard of ChatGPT said they had used it for schoolwork, which equals 13% of all teens, and use was highest among 11th and 12th graders. The report describes what teens say they do and think, not whether the chatbot helped or hurt their learning. Pew calls itself a nonpartisan fact tank and publishes its survey questions and methods, which makes the figures a dependable baseline. Its January 2025 follow-up found that the share of teens using ChatGPT for schoolwork had doubled to 26%, so pair this source with the newer data in any paper on current trends.

That annotation covers all three jobs in about 130 words. The last two sentences are what separate an annotation from an abstract: they judge the source and place it next to Pew’s 2025 update on teens and ChatGPT. For MLA versions and more samples, see our annotated bibliography format guide.

Common Bibliography Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Most bibliography errors come from mixing rules across styles or editions, or from trusting a citation generator without checking what it produced. Check your list for these before you submit.

Citation generators and reference managers save time, but they copy whatever metadata they find, including messy capitalization and missing details. Treat their output as a first draft. A correct bibliography is also only half of citing well: every idea you paraphrase still needs an in-text citation, which our guide on how to avoid plagiarism explains step by step.

If you want a second set of eyes, a tutor can review your bibliography against your in-text citations and explain each correction, so you can catch the same problems yourself next time.

Final Bibliography Checklist

• The right style, edition and page title: References, Works Cited or Bibliography.
• Every in-text citation has an entry, and every entry is cited unless your instructor allows consulted sources.
• Entries are alphabetized by their first word, each with a 0.5-inch hanging indent.
• Spacing matches the style: double for APA and MLA, single with blank lines between entries for Chicago papers that follow Turabian.
• Capitalization is checked: sentence case for APA titles, title case for MLA and Chicago.
• The right titles are italicized, and DOIs are included wherever they exist.
• Each entry ends with the right punctuation, with no period after an APA DOI or URL.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Difference Between a Bibliography and a Works Cited Page?

A works cited page lists only the sources you cited in your paper, while a bibliography can also include sources you read but did not cite. MLA uses Works Cited and suggests a separate Works Consulted list for extra reading. Chicago’s notes-bibliography system uses the title Bibliography and allows relevant uncited works. APA uses neither name: its list is called References and holds cited works only.

Does a Bibliography Go in Alphabetical Order?

Yes. APA, MLA and Chicago all alphabetize entries by the first word of each entry, which is usually the first author’s last name. When a source has no author, you alphabetize it by its title instead. Don’t number the entries or group them by source type unless your instructor asks for that. An MLA annotated bibliography may also be arranged by date or subject, but alphabetical order is the default.

Is a Bibliography Double-Spaced?

It depends on the style. APA and MLA double-space the whole list, within and between entries, with no extra blank lines. Chicago student papers that follow Turabian single-space each entry and leave one blank line between entries. All three styles give every entry a 0.5-inch hanging indent. If your instructor sets different spacing rules, follow your instructor.

Should You Include Sources You Did Not Cite in a Bibliography?

Only if your style and your instructor allow it. APA says to leave out any work you read but did not cite. MLA’s Works Cited also lists cited works only, though the MLA suggests a separate Works Consulted list if your instructor has no objection. A Chicago bibliography may include other relevant sources you consulted. If the assignment just says “bibliography,” ask which version is expected.

How Many Sources Should a Bibliography Have?

No citation style sets a minimum or a maximum. The number comes from your assignment, so check the prompt or rubric first. If it doesn’t say, let the paper decide: every source you cite needs an entry, and a few strong, relevant sources usually serve a short paper better than a long list padded with weak ones. Your instructor or a campus librarian can tell you what is typical for the course.

Can You Use a Citation Generator for Your Bibliography?

Yes, as long as you check every entry it produces. Generators and reference managers such as Zotero pull details from databases and web pages, and that metadata can be incomplete or wrongly capitalized. Compare each entry with the source and with your style’s rules on author names, dates, sentence case versus title case, italics and DOIs. Also confirm the tool is set to the right edition, such as APA 7 or MLA 9.

What Is the Difference Between a Bibliography and an Annotated Bibliography?

A regular bibliography lists citations only. An annotated bibliography adds a short paragraph under each citation that summarizes and evaluates the source. Cornell University Library describes annotations as usually about 150 words, covering what the source says, how reliable it is and how it fits your research. The citations themselves follow the same style rules as any other bibliography, so format them first.