One of the most dreaded parts of an assignment is to sort out the citations and arrange them in a particular referencing style to compose a proper bibliography. A bibliography is an essential part of your assignment since it helps the reader to understand the sources from where you gathered the information to complete the assignment. Referencing is an important part of the assignment, but a bibliography includes something more. While in referencing you are supposed to mention only those sources which you have cited in your paper but a bibliography contains all the information whether it was cited or not.
For example, you were given to do an assignment on World War I, so you read a lot of history books and articles related to World War I to understand the content to compose an assignment. In the bibliography, you will have to mention those books and articles which you read while completing the assignment but in referencing, you will only need to mention those books, articles or journals whose content you have cited or used as it is within the text of your assignment.
Types Of Sources Used In Bibliography
There are two main types of sources: printed and web sources. Printed sources include books, articles, reports, journals, etc; while web sources include whatever is on the internet, be it an online article, report or a journal. The details of the bibliography differ depending on the aforementioned two types of sources. In printed sources, information such as the name and surname of the author of the work, the full title of the work and name of the publishing company is necessarily mentioned. Also, the date and place of publish, and the number of pages are added as information.
However, with web resources, it is necessary to keep in mind to add the URL of the work itself. Besides the URL, the title (if any), the name of the web page’s owner and the date when the work was consulted as a source are added.
Differentiating The Styles
Segregating the sources into printed and web, and highlighting the different information is not only enough. There are also different ways with which you can style and do your reference. APA, Chicago, Harvard and Vancouver are some of the different referencing styles which are common in the field of academia when composing an assignment.
- APA: The APA style is an “author-date” style. The citation in the text contains the author’s or authors’ surname and the year of the publication which is either given wholly or partially in round brackets. There is not a lot of distinction between books, journals, internet documents or other formats except for those electronic documents that provide page numbers.
- Chicago: Chicago style is of two types, one of which is notes and bibliography and another is author-date. The notes and bibliography system is used by those working in the field of humanities, which includes literature, history and the arts. The author-date system is usually used in sciences or social sciences. While the notes and bibliography system can accommodate a variety of sources, the author-date system has sources cited in a brief manner.
- Harvard: Harvard style of referencing is an umbrella term for the style of referencing which uses the name of the author and the year of publication within the text to indicate where the source has been inserted.
- Vancouver: Vancouver is a numbered referencing style that is commonly used in medicine and science. It consists of citations to someone else’s work within the text which is indicated by the usage of numbers and a sequentially numbered list of references at the end of the assignment which provides full details of the in-text citations.
The Bottom Line
One of the reasons referencing is so emphasized upon while doing academic research assignments is to reduce plagiarism. Plagiarism, in simple words, is to steal someone else’s work entirely or partially and call it your own. It is almost impossible to produce work without incorporating someone else’s work because you need resources to collect data and thoughts. Bibliography helps in avoiding plagiarism by having to mention the source of the resources which are borrowed. With the prevalence of web material, plagiarism has increased manifolds. Writings are copied entirely. However, in a proper academic research assignment, it is absolutely forbidden to plagiarise and nothing but making a proper bibliography helps in keeping a check on plagiarism.
Top assigmnent writing services suggested following some tips to get a perfect bibliography for your upcoming semester.
- Since a bibliography is an integral part of an assignment, it is necessary to take it seriously and do it properly.
- Keep noting down all the books and articles you referred to while doing the assignment properly so that you do not forget it later.
- Use proper referencing style and pattern of bibliography as instructed by your assignment supervisor.
