As you progress in your education, you’ll be expected to do more and more independent research. This means making bibliographies to show the reader/marker all the research that you’ve consulted. You may even have found already that you’ve received some coursework feedback and have lost a few marks because of issues with your bibliography. This can be really annoying, as can, in fact, the process of formatting a bibliography itself. After all, surely it’s only the bibliography and doesn’t represent your main ideas?

Well, in fact the bibliography is an important part of academic practice, and the further you progress through university the more you’ll appreciate this. And on a more pragmatic level, remember that a well-crafted bibliography also represents an easy opportunity to get some extra marks in your coursework. Just by taking that little bit of extra time to learn the correct techniques for formatting a bibliography, you can win yourself some easy extra marks.

If you’re unsure about formatting a bibliography, consult your department’s style guide. This should be available through your department’s website or the library’s website. It’s never a good idea to just assume that it’ll be a certain way; the expectations when it comes to formatting a bibliography vary from department to department within a university. If you’re having trouble locating the style guide, ask one of your lecturers where you can access it; the chances are that it’ll either be included in your departmental handbook or available for download on your course’s VLE.

When formatting a bibliography it’s important to take the time to get the basics right. This means putting items in alphabetical order, and maybe subdividing between books and journal articles, if that’s what your style guide tells you to do. Another mistake to avoid when formatting a bibliography (again check how your style guide does this as each one varies!) is not to keep writing the same author’s name for each entry if you’ve used several items by one person. Check how dates should be ordered for this scenario as well (e.g. do you list the earliest or most recent publication first).

Check you have all the relevant bits of publication data for each work you consulted when you are formatting a bibliography. This means the obvious ones, such as author and title, but also the place and name of the publisher and year of publication if it’s a book. If you’re using a single chapter in a book, make sure you have the name of the book that it’s taken from. And if you’re using journal articles, you’ll need the issue, volume number and page numbers (note that for some online journal publications, not all of these things will be relevant or obvious). If you don’t find this information straight away, don’t assume that it doesn’t exist. Sometimes checking how an item has been cited in another article can give you the missing bits of information.

When formatting a bibliography it’s also a really bad idea to just copy and paste all the items from the reading list. These are, of course, important resources to consult, but you should also be finding other items on your own. And don’t dishonestly over-pack the bibliography. The marker will be able to tell whether you really used all of these items.

Using different types of resources can also be a really good idea. Ultimately your bibliography will show what sorts of research you’ve done. A key part of creating a good bibliography (and good essay) is to consult a wide range of documents. There’s no checklist for this, but think about using books, journals, conference proceedings and authoritative websites when gathering your research.

Let’s face it, creating and formatting a bibliography can be a bit of a pain. But it’s worth putting some effort into this as it’s an easy way to gain or lose points in your coursework. If you’ve managed to create an extensive and well-constructed bibliography in the process of doing your coursework, chances are you’ll have a pretty good essay to go with it.