How to Write a Bibliography for a School Level Project

A bibliography is a complete list of resources you used to create a school project. This includes both sources you directly quoted in your project and those you only read for ideas or background information. When in doubt, always include an item. Bibliographies follow a specific format that is determined by the citation style specified by your teacher. The two most common styles in grades K-12 and college are MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA (American Psychological Association).

Write an MLA entry for one book with one author using the following template:

{Last Name of Author}, {First Name of Author}. {Book Title}. {Location of Publisher}: {Publisher Name}, {Publication Year}. Print.

Change the information inside the {} signs to fit your source, but do not include the {} marks. Italicize the book title.

For example:

Grass, Gunter. The Tin Drum. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.

Write an APA entry for one book with one author using the following template:

{Last Name of Author}, {First Name of Author}. ({Publication Year}). {Book Title}. {Location of Publisher}: {Publisher Name}.

Change the information inside the {} signs to fit your source, but do not include the {} marks. Italicize the book title.

For example:

Grass, Gunter. The Tin Drum (2009). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Write entries for additional source types, like websites or magazine articles, by consulting an MLA or APA style guide. (See Resources.)

Alphabetize the list by the first line of each entry. Usually this means alphabetizing the list by the author's last name, but if certain resources (i.e., websites) lack authors, you can use the title of the page.