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How to Write a Bibliography in APA Format

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

• APA Bibliography
• How to Create One
• Why You Need It

Sample Bibliography

An APA format bibliography lists all of the sources that might be used in a paper. A bibliography can be a great tool to help you keep track of information during the research and writing process. In some cases, your instructor may require you to include a bibliography as part of your assignment.

At a Glance

A well-written APA format bibliography can help you keep track of information and sources as you research and write your psychology paper. To create a bibliography, gather up all of the sources that you might use in your paper. Create an APA format reference for each source and then write a brief annotation. Your annotation should be a brief summary of what each reference is about. You can quickly refer to these annotations When writing your paper and determine which to include.

What Is an APA Format Bibliography?

An APA format bibliography is an alphabetical listing of all sources that might be used to write an academic paper, essay, article, or research paper—particularly work that is covering psychology or psychology-related topics. APA format is the official style of the American Psychological Association (APA). This format is used by many psychology professors, students, and researchers.

Even if it is not a required part of your assignment, writing a bibliography can help you keep track of your sources and make it much easier to create your final reference page in proper APA format.

Creating an APA Bibliography

A bibliography is similar in many ways to a reference section , but there are some important differences. While a reference section includes every source that was actually used in your paper, a bibliography may include sources that you considered using but may have dismissed because they were irrelevant or outdated.

Bibliographies can be a great way to keep track of information you might want to use in your paper and to organize the information that you find in different sources. The following are four steps you can follow to create your APA format bibliography.

Start on a New Page

Your working bibliography should be kept separate from the rest of your paper. Start it on a new page, with the title "Bibliography" centered at the top and in bold text. Some people use the title "References" instead, so it's best to check with your professor or instructor about which they prefer you to use.

Gather Your Sources

Compile all the sources you might possibly use in your paper. While you might not use all of these sources in your paper, having a complete list will make it easier later on when you prepare your reference section.

Gathering your sources can be particularly helpful when outlining and writing your paper.

By quickly glancing through your working bibliography, you will be able to get a better idea of which sources will be the most appropriate to support your thesis and main points.

Reference Each Source

Your references should be listed alphabetically by the author’s last name, and they should be double-spaced. The first line of each reference should be flush left, while each additional line of a single reference should be a few spaces to the right of the left margin, which is known as a hanging indent.

The format of each source is as follows for academic journals:

• Last name of first author (followed by their first initial)
• The year the source was published in parentheses
• The title of the source
• The journal that published the source (in italics)
• The volume number, if applicable (in italics)
• The issue number, if applicable
• Page numbers (in parentheses)
• The URL or "doi" in lowercase letters followed by a colon and the doi number, if applicable

The following examples are scholarly articles in academic journals, cited in APA format:

• Kulacaoglu, F., & Kose, S. (2018). Borderline personality disorder (BPD): In the midst of vulnerability, chaos, and awe.  Brain sciences ,  8 (11), 201. doi:10.3390/brainsci8110201
• Cattane, N., Rossi, R., & Lanfredi, M. (2017). Borderline personality disorder and childhood trauma: exploring the affected biological systems and mechanisms.  BMC Psychiatry,   18 (221). doi:10.1186/s12888-017-1383-2

Visit the American Psychological Association's website for more information on citing other types of sources including online media, audiovisual media, and more.

Create an Annotation for Each Source

Normally a bibliography contains only references' information, but in some cases you might decide to create an annotated bibliography. An annotation is a summary or evaluation of the source.

An annotation is a brief description of approximately 150 words describing the information in the source, your evaluation of its credibility, and how it pertains to your topic. Writing one of these for each piece of research will make your writing process faster and easier.

This step helpful in determining which sources to ultimately use in your paper. Your instructor may also require it as part of the assignment so they can assess your thought process and understanding of your topic.

Reasons to Write a Bibliography

One of the biggest reasons to create an APA format bibliography is simply to make the research and writing process easier.

If you do not have a comprehensive list of all of your references, you might find yourself scrambling to figure out where you found certain bits of information that you included in your paper.

A bibliography is also an important tool that your readers can use to access your sources.

While writing an annotated bibliography might not be required for your assignment, it can be a very useful step. The process of writing an annotation helps you learn more about your topic, develop a deeper understanding of the subject, and become better at evaluating various sources of information.

The following is an example of an APA format bibliography by the website EasyBib:

There are many online resources that demonstrate different formats of bibliographies, including the American Psychological Association website . Purdue University's Online Writing Lab also has examples of formatting an APA format bibliography.

Check out this video on their YouTube channel which provides detailed instructions on formatting an APA style bibliography in Microsoft Word.

You can check out the Purdue site for more information on writing an annotated APA bibliography as well.

What This Means For You

If you are taking a psychology class, you may be asked to create a bibliography as part of the research paper writing process. Even if your instructor does not expressly require a bibliography, creating one can be a helpful way to help structure your research and make the writing process more manageable.

For psychology majors , it can be helpful to save any bibliographies you have written throughout your studies so that you can refer back to them later when studying for exams or writing papers for other psychology courses.

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association . 7th Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2020.

Masic I. The importance of proper citation of references in biomedical articles.   Acta Inform Med . 2013;21(3):148–155. doi:10.5455/aim.2013.21.148-155

American Psychological Association. How do you format a bibliography in APA Style?

Cornell University Library. How to prepare an annotated bibliography: The annotated bibliography .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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• Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Published on 1 May 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 7 November 2022.

In Harvard style , the bibliography or reference list provides full references for the sources you used in your writing.

• A reference list consists of entries corresponding to your in-text citations .
• A bibliography sometimes also lists sources that you consulted for background research, but did not cite in your text.

The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. If in doubt about which to include, check with your instructor or department.

The information you include in a reference varies depending on the type of source, but it usually includes the author, date, and title of the work, followed by details of where it was published. You can automatically generate accurate references using our free reference generator:

Harvard Reference Generator

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Table of contents

Formatting a harvard style bibliography, harvard reference examples, referencing sources with multiple authors, referencing sources with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard bibliographies.

Sources are alphabetised by author last name. The heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘Bibliography’ appears at the top.

Each new source appears on a new line, and when an entry for a single source extends onto a second line, a hanging indent is used:

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Reference list or bibliography entries always start with the author’s last name and initial, the publication date and the title of the source. The other information required varies depending on the source type. Formats and examples for the most common source types are given below.

• Entire book
• Book chapter
• Translated book
• Edition of a book

Journal articles

• Print journal
• Online-only journal with DOI
• Online-only journal without DOI
• General web page
• Online article or blog
• Social media post

Newspapers and magazines

• Newspaper article
• Magazine article

When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘ et al. ’:

Sometimes a source won’t list all the information you need for your reference. Here’s what to do when you don’t know the publication date or author of a source.

Some online sources, as well as historical documents, may lack a clear publication date. In these cases, you can replace the date in the reference list entry with the words ‘no date’. With online sources, you still include an access date at the end:

When a source doesn’t list an author, you can often list a corporate source as an author instead, as with ‘Scribbr’ in the above example. When that’s not possible, begin the entry with the title instead of the author:

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference in meaning:

• A reference list only includes sources cited in the text – every entry corresponds to an in-text citation .
• A bibliography also includes other sources which were consulted during the research but not cited.

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

In Harvard style referencing , to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:

• (Smith, 2019a)
• (Smith, 2019b)

Add ‘a’ to the first one you cite, ‘b’ to the second, and so on. Do the same in your bibliography or reference list .

To create a hanging indent for your bibliography or reference list :

• Highlight all the entries
• Click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the ‘Paragraph’ tab in the top menu.
• In the pop-up window, under ‘Special’ in the ‘Indentation’ section, use the drop-down menu to select ‘Hanging’.
• Then close the window with ‘OK’.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, November 07). Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 15 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-bibliography/

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Writing an Annotated Bibliography

Learn how to write and format an annotated bibliography in APA Style (7th ed.).

Conducting research and documenting your findings is an essential part of the academic writing process. There are times when you will need (or be required) to conduct initial research prior to deciding on a thesis or focus for your writing. An annotated bibliography is a helpful tool to help you track and assess your sources.

Similar to formatting a paper, an annotated bibliography is formatted with double spacing and has a title page. An annotated bibliography does not typically include a list of references, since the annotated bibliography itself is a list of references, only each entry also provides information about the source.

Components of an Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography includes a reference entry and a short annotation (paragraph) for each source. How annotations are written depends on the purpose of the research. There are two main components for each source included in an annotated bibliography:

• Bibliographic Information : This includes the same information you would provide in a reference list, formatted according to a reference entry for the particular type of source it is.
• Annotation : This is a short paragraph about the source that oftentimes summarizes the source and evaluates the usefulness of the source for your research paper or project, but what you include in the paragraph will largely depend on your particular assignment requirements.

Purposes of Writing an Annotated Bibliography

Writing an annotated bibliography is an effective way to document the research process and better prepare for a first draft. By requiring an annotated bibliography, your professor is setting you up for success. Some of the purposes and benefits of writing an annotated bibliography include the following:

• Formulate a thesis : Conducting research is a prewriting activity that can help narrow the focus of a topic that you are researching. Writing annotations for each source can help you understand the breadth and depth of a subject and determine your focus.
• Review the literature : An annotated bibliography can help you analyze the available literature on a subject. This is especially helpful for relatively new or persuasive topics where it is important to read about multiple sides of an issue.
• Illustrate the direction of your research : An employer or professor may want a preview of your research prior to the final draft of your paper. An annotated bibliography is a way to show your current research and its usefulness.
• Help other researchers : When other researchers find your paper particularly engaging, they often will examine your reference entries. However, an annotated bibliography provides more information about a source, such as a summary, which allows researchers to make an informed decision about whether to locate that source. With a references list, the reader has to guess whether a source will be useful and relevant.

Ways to Annotate Sources

There are several ways to write annotations depending on the purpose or the requirements of the assignment or research. Common approaches to writing annotations include the following:

• Summarize the source : Summarizing the source means to state briefly the main ideas of the source in relation to the current research. For instance, a medical book may have multiple chapters, but the only part to summarize for this source is the information that pertains to the research for the current paper’s topic. Please note: A summary must be written in your own words.
• Evaluate the source : To evaluate a source means you determine the strengths and weaknesses of the piece in relation to a particular research topic. When evaluating a source, the reliability and validity of the source are also determined. Reliability refers to the source’s credibility. Is it biased? Is the article from a website that is also selling a product related to the subject of the article? Is there a hidden agenda in the source? Validity indicates the accuracy or correctness of the information. Is the information gathered from experts? Is it just the opinion of the author? Is the author an authority on the topic at hand? What are their professional or academic credentials?
• Reflect on the usefulness of the source : How does this source fit in with the current research project? Is this a source you can use in your paper? Does it help define a problem or present an argument that would add depth and detail to your research? Is it better suited as a starting point to find other sources (i.e., is it useful only for background information)?
• Combination : Any combination of the above approaches to writing an annotation may be required. You may choose to write a separate short paragraph for each approach, or combine them into one annotation. As always, it is essential that you are careful to restate things in your own words to avoid plagiarizing an authors’ original words or ideas.

Sample Annotated Bibliography

Note. When formatting an Annotated Bibliography on a Word document, the bibliographic references have hanging indents .

Baker, B. (2003, November 27). Version control helps keep rework to a minimum. *EDN, 48*(26), 227-232. https://doi.org/10.9999/1.111111

This is a short article geared mostly toward digital developers who either are programming more than 10,000 lines of code or are programming within teams. It also emphasizes the importance of a VCS, but more so in the development environment. For this project, the only thing I might use this for is the simple statement that while a VCS is great for any work environment, without the discipline to use it regularly, they are worthless.

Huber, T. (2005, May). *JEDI version control system*. SourceForge. https://jedivcs.sourceforge.net

This site includes detailed instructions for operating an open source VCS. It is written for a technical audience that must have some background on this particular system. What is interesting about this site is the idea of open source. Maybe there are other version control systems available via the Internet through shareware sites. This particular site will probably not be used in writing the final project, but it is a source that can lead to further research on this idea of freeware for a VCS.

McVittie, L. (2007). Version control, with integrity. *Network Computing, 12*(21), 34-45. https://doi.org/10.9999/2.222222

This is an informative article with an overview of the details inside a VCS—branching, configuration, repository, access management, and more. What makes this article valuable though is the overview of several version control systems on the market (at least in 2001). After reading through the overview of several products, if one fits what my company is looking for, I can begin searching for that product and further information on the Internet. This article may or may not be used in the actual writing of the final proposal, but it will be useful information for further research on the project.

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / MLA Format / Creating an MLA Bibliography

Creating an MLA Bibliography

If you write a research paper in MLA format, then you will need to include a Works Cited page according to the current 9th edition of the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines. Along with citing your sources within the body of your paper, you also need to include full citations of all sources at the end of your paper. The references in a bibliography are formatted in the same way as they would be in a Works Cited page. However, a bibliography refers to all works that you have consulted in your research, even if you did not use their information directly in your paper.

When you use the correct MLA bibliography format, it shows the reader what sources you consulted, makes finding your sources easier for the reader, and gives credibility to your work as a researcher and writer. This MLA sample paper will show you how the bibliography is incorporated into the rest of your paper. We also have a guide on APA reference pages , if you are following APA style in your paper.

Works cited or bibliography?

You may be wondering, what is a bibliography, and how is it different from a Works Cited page? The difference between the two is that while a bibliography refers to any source you consulted to write your research paper, a Works Cited page only includes full citations of the sources you quoted or paraphrased within your paper.

Typically, when someone says, “MLA bibliography” they really mean a Works Cited page, since the MLA format usually uses a Works Cited page instead of a bibliography.

A bibliography in MLA format may also refer to a Works Consulted page. If you used other sources that you did not directly quote or paraphrase within the paper, you will need to create a Works Consulted/Additional Resources page. A Works Consulted page starts on a separate page and follows the Works Cited page. It follows the same formatting guidelines as a Works Cited page, but you will use Works Consulted (or Additional Resources) as the title.

If you’re unsure of what to include in your citations list (works cited, works consulted, or both), ask your instructor. For the rest of this article, we will refer to this page as the MLA bibliography.

MLA bibliography formatting guidelines

These are the formatting rules you need to follow to create your bibliography according to MLA’s current edition guidelines. Your first page(s) will be your Works Cited page(s) and include the references that you directly refer to in your paper. Usually, this is all that is needed. If your instructor wants you to also include the works you consulted but did not include in your paper (more like a bibliography), then add Works Consulted or Additional Resources page for these sources.

• Your MLA Works Cited (and Works Consulted or Additional Resources pages) should begin on a separate page or pages at the end of your essay.
• Your essay should have a header on every page that includes your last name and the page number.
• The last name/page number header should be on the top right of each page with a ½ inch margin from the top of the page.
• One-inch margins.
• Title the page Works Cited (no italicization or quotation marks) unless otherwise instructed. Center the title. The top should look like this:

• Only center the Works Cited title; all citations should be left-justified.
• Double-space citations.
• Do not add an additional space between citations.
• After the first line, use a hanging indent of ½ inch on all additional lines of a citation. The hanging indent should look like this:

• Typically, this is the author’s last name, but sometimes it could be the title of the source if the author’s name is not available.

If you have a Works Consulted or Additional Resources page after your Works Cited page, format it in the same way, but with the title of Works Consulted or Additional Resources instead of Works Cited. Alternatively, your instructor may require a bibliography. If this is the case, all your sources, whether they are cited in your paper are not, are listed on the same page.

MLA citation guidelines

These are the rules you need to follow to create citations for an MLA bibliography. This section contains information on how to correctly use author names, punctuation, capitalization, fonts, page numbers, DOIs, and URLS in the citations on your MLA bibliography.

Author names

After the title Works Cited, the last name of the author of a source should be the first thing to appear on your page.

List the author’s last name followed by a comma, then the first name followed by the middle name or middle initial if applicable, without a comma separating the first and middle names. Add a period after the name.

Rowling, J.K.

Smith, Alexander McCall.

• Do not include titles such as Dr., Mrs., etc. or professional qualifications such as PhD, M.S., etc. with author names.
• Include suffixes such as Jr. or III after the author’s first name. Separate the first name and the suffix by a comma unless the suffix is a numeral. For example, to cite an author named John Smith, Jr., you would type Smith, John, Jr.

Sources with two authors

For a source with two authors, list the author names in your citation in the order they appear on the source, not alphabetically.

Type the last name of the first author listed on the source followed by a comma, then the first author’s first name followed by a comma. Then type the word “and” then list the second author’s first name and last name in the standard order. Follow the second name with a period.

Include middle names or initials and suffixes when applicable according to the guidelines for one author as listed above.

1st Author’s Last Name, First Name, and 2nd Author’s First Name Last Name.

Lutz, Lisa, and David Hayward.

Clark, Mary Higgins, and Alafair Burke.

Sources with three or more authors

For a source with three or more authors, only type the last and first name of the first author listed in the source, followed by a comma and the phrase et al., which is Latin for “and others.” Be sure to always place a period after the al in et al. but never after the et.

1st Author’s Last Name, First Name, et al.

Charaipotra, Sona, et al.

Williams, Beatriz, et al. All the Ways We Said Goodbye . HarperLuxe, 2020.

Organizations and corporations as authors

For sources with organizations or corporations listed as the author, type the name of the corporation in place of an author’s name. If the organization begins with an article like a, an, or the, it should be excluded in the Works Cited entry.

Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook . 2016.

*Note: If the organization is listed as both the author and the publisher, begin the citation with the title and include the organization’s name within the publisher field instead. 

For a source with no author listed, simply omit the author’s name and begin the citation with the title of the source. Use the first letter of the title when considering alphabetical order in your MLA bibliography.

Capitalization

Use MLA title case when citing titles of sources.

• Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and subordinating conjunctions should be capitalized.
• Articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions should not be capitalized.

Font formatting

• Italicize the titles of larger works such as magazines and books. Also, italicize database and website names.
• Instead of italicization, use quotation marks around titles of shorter works such as poems, short stories, and articles.
• End all bibliography citations with a period.

Page numbers

Include page numbers in your full citations whenever possible. This helps the reader find the information you cited more quickly than if you just cited the entire source and lends more credibility to your argument. If you cite different pages from the same source within your paper, you should cite the entire source on your MLA bibliography instead of listing all of the page numbers you used.

When including page numbers in a citation, use the abbreviation p. to cite one page and the abbreviation pp. to cite multiple pages with a hyphen between the page numbers.

p. 25 or pp. 16-37

When citing page numbers in MLA, omit the first set of repeated digits.

pp. 365-69, not pp. 365-369

DOIs and URLs

A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is used to locate and identify an online source. While URLs may change or web pages might be edited or updated, a DOI is permanent and therefore more useful in a source citation.

• Use a DOI (digital object identifier) whenever possible. Otherwise use a permalink or URL.
• DOIs should be formatted with “https://doi.org/” before the DOI number.
• Do not include “http://” or “https://” in your URLs.
• As either one will be the last part of your citation, place a period after the DOI or URL. (Note that this period is not part of the DOI or URL.)

Butarbutar, R, et al. “Analyzing of Puzzle Local Culture-Based in Teaching English for Young Learners.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , vol. 343, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/343/1/012208.

Accessed dates

Since the previous 8th edition of the MLA Handbook was published, you do NOT need to list an accessed date for a stable source (e.g., online newspaper article, journal article, photograph, etc.). However, including an access date is good to include when a source does not have a publishing date, and some instructors will request that accessed dates be included for all sources.

If you do include an access date, here’s how to format it:

• Place it at the end of the citation without “http://” or “https://”.
• Write “Accessed” first, followed by the date accessed.
• The date accessed should be formatted as Day Month (abbreviated) Year.

Butarbutar, R, et al. “IOPscience.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , IOP Publishing, 1 Oct. 2019, iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/343/1/012208/meta. Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.

Note: If you choose to list an accessed date after a DOI, the accessed date part of the citation will follow the period after the DOI and will end with a period at the end of the citation

Butarbutar, R, et al. “Analyzing of Puzzle Local Culture-Based in Teaching English for Young Learners.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , vol. 343, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/343/1/012208. Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.

MLA 8 th edition vs MLA 9 th edition

The 9 th edition of the MLA handbook re-introduces guidelines regarding paper formatting (which were not present in the 8 th edition). The guidance in the 9 th addition is consistent with the guidance in previous editions and expands on the formatting of tables, figures/illustrations, and lists. The 9 th edition also offers new guidance in areas like annotated bibliographies, inclusive language, and footnotes/endnotes.

Many of the differences between the 8 th edition and 9 th edition have to do with the formatting of the core elements in reference list entries. Some of the main changes include:

Written by Grace Turney , freelance writer and artist. Grace is a former librarian and has a Master’s degree in Library Science and Information Technology. 

MLA Formatting Guide

MLA Formatting

Annotated Bibliography

Bibliography

• Block Quotes
• et al Usage
• In-text Citations
• Paraphrasing
• Page Numbers
• Sample Paper
• Works Cited
• MLA 8 Updates
• MLA 9 Updates
• View MLA Guide

Citation Examples

• Book Chapter
• Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Website (no author)
• View all MLA Examples

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An MLA bibliography is similar to the Works Cited list that you include at the end of your paper. The only difference between a Works Cited list and a bibliography is that for the former, you need to include the entries for only the sources you cited in the text, whereas for the latter you can also include the sources you consulted to write your paper but didn’t directly cite in your writing. MLA generally prefers Works Cited lists to bibliographies.

If your instructor advises you to create an MLA bibliography, follow the same guidelines you would follow for creating an MLA Works Cited list.

The bibliography list appears at the end of the paper, after any endnotes if they are present.

All margins (top, bottom, left, and right) should be set at 1 inch.

Write the running head in the top right of the page at 0.5 inch from the top. Use the running head “Surname Page #.”

The font should be clear enough to read. Use Times New Roman font of size 12 points.

Entries should be double-spaced. If any entry runs over more than a line, indent the subsequent lines of the entry 0.5 inch from the left margin.

Bibliographic entries are arranged alphabetically according to the first item in each entry.

Title your bibliography as “Bibliography.”

Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman . Polity, 2013.

Brisini, Travis. “Phytomorphizing Performance: Plant Performance in an Expanded Field.” Text and Performance Quarterly , vol. 39, 2019,            pp. 1–2.

Riccio, Thomas. “Reimagining Yup’ik and Inupiat Performance.” Northwest Theatre Review , vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–30.

General rules for creating an annotated bibliography

The annotation is given after the source entry and is generally about 100-150 words in length. The annotation should be indented 1 inch from the left margin to distinguish it from the hanging indent within the citation entry.

The annotation, in general, should be written as short phrases. However, you may use full sentences as well.

The annotation for each source is usually no longer than one paragraph. However, if multiple paragraphs are included, indent the second and subsequent paragraphs without any extra line space between them.

The annotation provides basic information about the source, but does not include details about the source, quotes from the author, etc. The information can be descriptive (by generally describing what the source covers) or evaluative (by evaluating the source’s usefulness to the argument in your paper).

Example annotated bibliography

The below is an example of an annotated bibliography:

Morritt, Robert D. Beringia: Archaic Migrations into North America . Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2011.

The author studies the migration of cultures from Asia to North America. The connection between the North American Athabaskan language family and Siberia is presented, together with comparisons and examinations of the implications of linguistics from anthropological, archaeological, and folklore perspectives. This book explores the origins of the earliest people in the Americas, including Siberian, Dene, and Navajo Creation myths; linguistic comparisons between Siberian Ket Navajo and Western Apache; and comparisons between indigenous groups that appear to share the same origin.

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How to Write a Research Paper: Annotated Bibliography

• Anatomy of a Research Paper
• Developing a Research Focus
• Background Research Tips
• Searching Tips
• Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Journals
• Thesis Statement
• Annotated Bibliography
• Citing Sources
• Evaluating Sources
• Literature Review
• Academic Integrity
• Scholarship as Conversation
• Understanding Fake News
• Data, Information, Knowledge

What is an Annotated Bibliography?

UMary Writing Center

Check out the resources available from the  Writing Center . 

Write an Annotated Bibliography

What is an annotated bibliography?

It is a list of citations for various books, articles, and other sources on a topic. 

An annotation is a short summary and/or critical evaluation of a source.

Annotated bibliographies answer the question: "What would be the most relevant, most useful, or most up-to-date sources for this topic?"

 Annotated bibliographies can be part of a larger research project, or can be a stand-alone report in itself. 

Annotation versus abstracts 

An abstract is a paragraph at the beginning of the paper that discusses the main point of the original work. They typically do not include evaluation comments. 

Annotations can either be descriptive or evaluative. The annotated bibliography looks like a works cited page but includes an annotation after each source cited. 

Types of Annotations: 

Descriptive Annotations: Focuses on description. Describes the source by answering the following questions. 

Who wrote the document?

What does the document discuss?

When and where was the document written? 

Why was the document produced?

How was it provided to the public?

Evaluative Annotations: Focuses on description and evaluation. Includes a summary and critically assess the work for accuracy, relevance, and quality. 

Evaluative annotations help you learn about your topic, develop a thesis statement, decide if a specific source will be useful for your assignment, and determine if there is enough valid information available to complete your project.

What does the annotation include?

Depending on your assignment and style guide, annotations may include some or all of the following information. 

• Should be no more than 150 words or 4 to 6 sentences long. 
• What is the main focus or purpose of the work?
• Who is the intended audience?
• ​How useful or relevant was the article to your topic?
• Was there any unique features that useful to you?
• What is the background and credibility of the author?
• What are any conclusions or observations that your reached about the article?

Which citation style to use?

There are many styles manuals with specific instructions on how to format your annotated bibliography. This largely depends on what your instructor prefers or your subject discipline. Check out our citation guides for more information. 

Additional Information

Why doesn't APA have an official APA-approved format for annotated bibliographies?

Always consult your instructor about the format of an annotated bibliography for your class assignments. These guides provide you with examples of various styles for annotated bibliographies and they may not be in the format required by your instructor. 

Citation Examples and Annotations

Book Citation with Descriptive Annotation

Liroff, R. A., & G. G. Davis. (1981). Protecting open space: Land use control in the Adirondack Park. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

This book describes the implementation of regional planning and land use regulation in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The authors provide program evaluations of the Adirondack Park Agency’s regulatory and local planning assistance programs.

Journal Article Citation with Evaluative Annotation

Gottlieb, P. D. (1995). The “golden egg” as a natural resource: Toward a normative theory of growth management. Society and Natural Resources, 8, (5): 49-56.

This article explains the dilemma faced by North American suburbs, which demand both preservation of local amenities (to protect quality of life) and physical development (to expand the tax base). Growth management has been proposed as a policy solution to this dilemma. An analogy is made between this approach and resource economics. The author concludes that the growth management debate raises legitimate issues of sustainability and efficiency.

Examples were taken from http://lib.calpoly.edu/support/how-to/write-an-annotated-bibliography/#samples

Book Citation

Lee, Seok-hoon, Yong-pil Kim, Nigel Hemmington, and Deok-kyun Yun. “Competitive Service Quality Improvement (CSQI): A Case Study in the Fast-Food Industry.” Food Service Technology 4 (2004): 75-84.

In this highly technical paper, three industrial engineering professors in Korea and one services management professor in the UK discuss the mathematical limitations of the popular SERVQUAL scales. Significantly, they also aim to measure service quality in the fast-food industry, a neglected area of study. Unfortunately, the paper’s sophisticated analytical methods make it inaccessible to all but the most expert of researchers.

Battle, Ken. “Child Poverty: The Evolution and Impact of Child Benefits.”  A Question of Commitment: Children's Rights in Canada . Ed. Katherine Covell and R.Brian Howe. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 2007. 21-44.

             Ken Battle draws on a close study of government documents, as well as his own research as an extensively-published policy analyst, to explain Canadian child benefit programs.  He outlines some fundamental assumptions supporting the belief that all society members should contribute to the upbringing of children.  His comparison of child poverty rates in a number of countries is a useful wake-up to anyone assuming Canadian society is doing a good job of protecting children.  Battle pays particular attention to the National Child Benefit (NCB), arguing that it did not deserve to be criticized by politicians and journalists.  He outlines the NCB’s development, costs, and benefits, and laments that the Conservative government scaled it back in favour of the inferior Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB).  However, he relies too heavily on his own work; he is the sole or primary author of almost half the sources in his bibliography.  He could make this work stronger by drawing from others' perspectives and analyses.  However, Battle does offer a valuable source for this essay, because the chapter provides a concise overview of government-funded assistance currently available to parents.  This offers context for analyzing the scope and financial reality of child poverty in Canada.

Journal Article Example

  Kerr, Don and Roderic Beaujot. “Child Poverty and Family Structure in Canada, 1981-1997.”  Journal of Comparative Family Studies  34.3 (2003): 321-335.

             Sociology professors Kerr and Beaujot analyze the demographics of impoverished families.  Drawing on data from Canada’s annual Survey of Consumer Finances, the authors consider whether each family had one or two parents, the age of single parents, and the number of children in each household.  They analyze child poverty rates in light of both these demographic factors and larger economic issues.  Kerr and Beaujot use this data to argue that. 

Examples were taken from  http://libguides.enc.edu/writing_basics/ annotatedbib/mla

Check out these resources for more information about Annotated Bibliographies. 

• Purdue Owl- Annotated Bibliographies
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill- Annotated Bibliographies
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• Last Updated: Apr 4, 2024 5:51 PM
• URL: https://libguide.umary.edu/researchpaper

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

English: Bibliographic Essay

• Web Resources
• Bibliographic Essay

Bibliographic Essay Explanation

What is a Bibliographic Essay?

A bibliographic essay is a critical essay in which the writer identifies and evaluates the core works of research within a discipline or sub-discipline.

What is the purpose of a Bibliographic Essay?

A bibliographic essay is written to summarize and compare a number of sources on a single topic. The goal of this essay is not to prove anything about a subject, but rather to provide a general overview of the field. By looking through multiple books and articles, you can provide your reader with context for the subject you are studying, and recommend a few reputable sources on the topic.

Example of a Bibliographic Essay

• http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/pdfs/EG-AGuideToHerLife_BiographicalEssay-TheWorldofEmmaGoldman.pdf

Steps to Creating a Bibliographic Essay

• Start by searching our databases.  Think about your topic and brainstorm search terms before beginning. 
• Skim and review articles to determine whether they fit your topic.
• Evaluate your sources. 
• Statement summarizing the focus of your bibliographic essay.
• Give the title of each source following citation guidelines.
• Name the author of each source.
• Give important background information about authors, texts to be summarized, and the general topic from which the texts are drawn.
• Information from more than one source
• Use citations to indicate which material comes from which source. (Be careful not to plagiarize!)
• Show similarities and differences between the different sources.
• Represent texts fairly.
• Write a conclusion reminding the reader of the most significant themes you found and the ways they connect to the overall topic.
• << Previous: Citations
• Last Updated: Jan 17, 2023 1:03 PM
• URL: https://libguides.lipscomb.edu/english

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography, With Examples

An annotated bibliography is a type of bibliography that includes a comment by the author about the source in addition to the source’s publishing information. The author’s notes, or annotations, can discuss anything relevant to the topic, such as the source’s accuracy, the context in which it was written, or even your personal views on the source.

Annotated bibliographies are sometimes a requirement in assignments, so it’s a good idea to learn their rules. Below, we explain how to write an annotated bibliography in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats. We even include an annotated bibliography example for each.

Give your writing extra polish Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly

What is an annotated bibliography?

Annotated bibliographies are a type of bibliography with notes from the author on each source. These notes are called “annotations” and generally run around 50–150 words . The notes themselves have a very specific format, depending on the style guide used, as explained below.

What do annotated bibliography notes talk about?

Annotations in bibliographies can discuss anything relevant to the paper’s or book’s topic or give context to the reader so they can better understand the source. There are no formal restrictions on what annotations can be about, but in general, they usually fall into these categories:

• a brief overview of the source
• the background of the source’s author
• context about how or why the source was written
• the accuracy of the source
• any biases the source shows
• anything the source doesn’t address
• elements of the source that are particularly useful, like graphs or charts
• your personal views on the source

How to cite sources in an annotated bibliography

Annotated bibliographies cite their sources the same way as any other type of bibliography , including a works cited page or reference list . Simply follow the standard rules for whatever format you’re using when writing the full citation.

If you need help, Grammarly’s auto-citation feature can automatically create a citation if you’re using one of the ten most popular online source websites: Wikipedia, Frontiers, PLOS One, ScienceDirect, SAGE Journals, PubMed, Elsevier, DOAJ, arXiv, or Springer. Otherwise, feel free to use our free citation generator to create a full citation in whatever style you need.

How to write an annotated bibliography in APA, MLA, and Chicago

How to write an annotated bibliography in apa.

Annotated bibliographies in APA follow the same rules for page margins, font, and line spacing as other pages in the APA format , which you can find in the link.

The annotations for an annotated bibliography in APA, however, follow specific formatting rules:

• Annotations appear underneath the source they refer to.
• Use an indentation of 0.5 inches from the left margin (1.5 inches from the edge of the page) for all lines of the annotation, just like a block quote.
• The first line of an annotation does not get indented any further; use the same indentation as the other lines.
• If the annotation spans more than one paragraph, use an extra indentation of 0.5 inches (2 inches from the edge of the page) for the first line of any paragraphs after the first. Again, this follows the same format as block quotes.
• Sources are organized in alphabetical order by the creator’s surname, or last name (which comes first in citation entries).

How to write an annotated bibliography in MLA

The MLA format offers guidelines on both the formatting and content of annotations:

• Annotations should “describe or evaluate sources.” They should not discuss minor details, cite evidence, quote the source, or re-list the points in the source’s argument.
• Annotations can be written in either complete or incomplete sentences.
• Place annotations underneath the citation.
• Indent your annotation an additional 1 inch from the start of the entry (2 inches from the edge of the page). This differentiates it from the citation’s first indent (1 inch from the edge of the page) and its hanging indent (1.5 inches from the edge of the page).
• If the annotation spans more than one paragraph, use an extra indentation of 0.5 inches (2.5 inches from the edge of the page) for the first line of any paragraphs after the first.
• Title the page either “Annotated Bibliography” or “Annotated List of Works Cited.”
• You can choose whether to organize sources by the subject, date of publication, or alphabetically by author or title.

How to write an annotated bibliography in Chicago

Because the Chicago format is designed to be flexible, its rules for annotated bibliographies are more open-ended than the other formats. Here are the guidelines for how to write an annotated bibliography in Chicago style:

• If annotations are short and/or not included for every source, you can place annotations in brackets directly after the full citation, on the same line. If annotations are more detailed, start them on a new line underneath the full citation.
• Each line of an annotation is indented an additional 0.5 inches from the start of the entry (1.5 inches from the edge of the page). It should be equal to the hanging indent of the full citation.
• Annotated bibliographies may contain an author’s note at the top of the page. This should provide context about why the author chose these sources or how the page is organized.

Annotated bibliography examples

Annotated bibliography example for apa.

Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . W. W. Norton & Company. This book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, attempts to answer the question of why some civilizations succeeded while others faded away into history. Author Jared Diamond emphasizes the environmental and geographical influences on a civilization as factors for success, more than a civilization’s culture or race. While this book proves scientifically that race is inconsequential in the success of a civilization, critics accuse Diamond of reducing the whole of human history down to “environmental determinism.”

Annotated bibliography example for MLA

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. This book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, attempts to answer the question of why some civilizations succeeded while others faded away into history. Author Jared Diamond emphasizes the environmental and geographical influences on a civilization as factors for success, more than a civilization’s culture or race. While this book proves scientifically that race is inconsequential in the success of a civilization, critics accuse Diamond of reducing the whole of human history down to “environmental determinism.”

Annotated bibliography example for Chicago

Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . New York: W. W. Norton & Company. This book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, attempts to answer the question of why some civilizations succeeded while others faded away into history. Author Jared Diamond emphasizes the environmental and geographical influences on a civilization as factors for success, more than a civilization’s culture or race. While this book proves scientifically that race is inconsequential in the success of a civilization, critics accuse Diamond of reducing the whole of human history down to “environmental determinism.”

Annotated bibliography FAQs

An annotated bibliography is a type of bibliography that includes a comment by the author about each source in addition to the source’s publishing information. The author’s notes, or annotations, discuss anything about the source that’s relevant to the topic, such as its accuracy, bias, or the context in which it was written.

How does it differ from a regular bibliography?

Just like other bibliographies, annotated bibliographies list the sources cited in the work, along with their publishing details. The difference is that annotated bibliographies also include notes from the author with extra information, whereas regular bibliographies do not.

How is an annotated bibliography structured?

The structure of annotated bibliographies depends on the formatting style: APA, MLA, or Chicago. Although each style has its own formatting rules, in general, the annotation comes after the full citation and is often indented in the same manner as block quotes.

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography, in its purest form, is simply a list of sources and a description of each source. Aside from being an often required homework assignment in beginning college English courses, the annotated bibliography has a practical use as well. The idea of an annotated bibliography is that it gives you a springboard to write your essay. With this nasty (but helpful!) little tool, you compile all of your sources in their proper citation format and then you describe, briefly, what the content of the source is and its significance to your essay. This way, by the time you are done with your annotated bibliography, you can see what you have to work with, and what you still need more of.

Annotated bibliography vs. works cited/reference page

An annotated bibliography is sometimes confused with a works cited/reference page. Although they do not differ too much, the difference is important. A works cited page (in MLA) or a reference page (in APA) is simply the first part of an annotated bibliography. It is the part where the source is fully cited in the proper format (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). Your annotated bibliography, however, enhances this. To turn a works cited/reference page into an annotated bibliography, you must add the description of the source and its content. Here’s a comparison of a works cited vs. an annotated bibliography:

Reference list (in APA format):

Balkrishna, A., Guar, V., Telley, S. (2009). Effect of a yoga practice session and yoga theory session on state anxiety. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 109 (3), 924-930.

A nnotated bibliography (in APA format):

Balkrishna, A., Guar, V., Telley, S. (2009). Effect of a yoga practice session and yoga theory session on state anxiety. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 109 (3), 924-930. 

This study took 300 participants who were unfamiliar with yoga and tested the effects of this ancient method on reducing the participants’ State Anxiety. Participants were assigned to either the yoga practice group or the yoga theory group. Before and after a 2 hour session, participants’ State Anxiety scores were tested via the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Both groups showed significant decrease in anxiety symptoms after the session. The anxiety scores of the yoga practice group decreased by 14.5% and the yoga theory group’s scores declined by 3.4%.

Note: It is important that everything except the first line of the citation is indented one half inch—this is called a hanging indentation. In both an annotated bibliography and a good old-fashioned works cited page, everything related to that particular source is indented except for the first line with the author’s name at the beginning. This is true for both APA and MLA formatting.

What should be in an annotated bibliography?

As previously stated, first you’ll want to put the source into the proper citation format (whichever one is assigned to you by your professor). Then comes the “annotated” aspect of the annotated bibliography. This part is simply a description of your source, but be sure to put what is relevant about it. Random details may be interesting, but you will probably have a rather short amount of space to sum up an entire work, so your annotation should “cut to the chase,” so to speak. If you are writing an annotated bibliography for a research article, then write what is pertinent to your paper (or what you think will be pertinent to it). If you are writing an annotated bibliography for an argumentative paper, then include the parts of the text that will be important for backing your argument. Even if this is an assignment, make it count. Take advantage of your annotated bibliography to help you organize your material and form a better essay.

Make it make sense

The last thing to remember when you are writing your annotated bibliography is to make it make sense. By this, I mean making it fluid. In the annotated bibliography example above, the annotation begins by introducing the study and the participants. Then it progresses into what the study entailed and what the participants did. At the end, it sums up the study by showing the results. The annotation has a consistent rhythm and can easily be followed by the reader. As with an essay, have a plan as to how you want the annotation to pan out. Start with one subject matter or idea then neatly segue into another. This will make your ideas and the text’s content much easier to follow.

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Using information fairly and acknowledging sources accurately is an essential part of any research project. Citations provide information to help readers locate the sources you use and provide a way for you to credit other scholars for their original ideas or findings. Most researchers use  style guides or manuals  to format their citations in a consistent way so their readers can quickly identify and locate cited sources.

• How do I cite resources?
• Chicago Manual of Style This link opens in a new window & more less... The online version of the Chicago Manual of Style. Includes both the 15th and 16th editions.

Annotated bibliographies help to organize and summarize your research on a topic, which can help motivate you to write. An annotated bibliography includes a citation and a brief statement of its argument or purpose in your words. You can also include how you would use the source in your research.

• Writing an annotated Bibliography & more less... From the Univ of Toronto Library

• Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy This link opens in a new window & more less... Regularly updated annotated bibliography addressing themes and topics in Philosophy
• African-American Holiness Pentecostal Movement: an annotated bibliography by Sherry S. DuPree ISBN: 0824014499 Publication Date: 1995-11-01
• John Rawls and His Critics : an annotated bibliography by David T. Mason; J. H. Wellbank; Denis Snook ISBN: 0824092856 Publication Date: 1982-08-01

There are three general types of resources that may appear in an annotated bibliography. Primary sources provide your   first-hand evidence. Secondary sources include analysis or commentary on a primary source. Tertiary sources are summaries or compilations of primary and secondary sources. For example, if you were writing a paper about James Baldwin, a primary source would be anything written by James Baldwin , a secondary source would be articles and books analyzing James Baldwin's writings , and a tertiary source would be an encyclopedia entry about James Baldwin . An annotated bibliography is a type of tertiary source.

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• Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window & more less... Contains citations and abstracts covering scholarly research in the field of philosophy. Covers all major articles from anthologies and books in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French as well as 480 journals from 38 countries.
• Google Scholar Entries in Google Scholar include a "Cited by" list.
• Web of Science This link opens in a new window Search results in Web of Science can be arranged by "Most Cited" & more less... Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 10,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings. You'll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage available to 1900. Includes the Science Citation Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Web of Science is especially useful for its citation linking.
• Google Scholar Citation Gadget A Google Scholar Universal Gadget which enables users to search for the total number of citations per author. It provides a total citation count, total number of cited publications and H-Index.

Citation management tools are programs that collect records or citations from research databases (indexes, catalogs, etc.) that you can then organize for your research projects. They also help you cite your research by creating bibliographies, citations, and footnotes automatically.

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How to Write a Bibliography

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A bibliography is nothing more than a written list of your sources, outlining everything you used in the creation of the work, even if you didn’t cite it directly. This is something that almost all students will be asked to compile and add to their works at some point. Bibliographies are generally used in academic documents and from a student’s point of view they are most commonly used within your undergraduate or master’s dissertation. But what does a bibliography actually look like? When is a bibliography used? And how do you create a bibliography for your essay or research paper? Here’s everything you need to know about how to write a bibliography:

What is a Bibliography?

For many students creating a bibliography can be a daunting prospect, and part of the reason for this is that many students aren’t sure what a bibliography is. The good news is that a bibliography is much simpler than it sounds. A bibliography is nothing more than a list of all of the sources that you have used to help you write an essay or other extensive document. This includes not only the sources that you have directly quoted or referred to in your essay but also any works that you have read throughout your research for the piece. Even if a work is not cited directly, if you have read it as part of your essay preparation, or if your essay has otherwise been influenced by the work then it should be included and cited in your bibliography.

Bibliographies are commonly used in academic documents , such as at the end of an undergraduate or master’s level dissertation. But brief and less formal versions of bibliographies can also be used at the end of a journalistic piece, presentation, or video to lend them legitimacy and to visibly demonstrate that they have been well-researched. But academia is the main focus of the bibliography. So, if you’re thinking of pursuing further education and studying at degree level then it’s important that you understand what a bibliography is and how to create one. If an undergraduate essay or dissertation doesn’t include a properly cited and formatted bibliography, then it isn’t completed. As the way students access information has changed, so too has the information that you can include in your bibliography. Traditionally these were lists of books, essays and articles, but now websites, videos, and other multimedia sources should be cited in your bibliography too if they are accessed as part of your research.

There are many benefits of using a bibliography. These include:

• Demonstrating to your tutor, instructor, or anyone else assessing your essay that you have conducted the necessary research for your assignment and that you know how to put together a robust and comprehensive bibliography.
• Crediting the authors of any source materials that you have based your piece on for the research that they have conducted, ensuring that your piece does not appear plagiarised because all source materials used in your piece have been fully cited.
• Finally, as well as benefitting the authors you have cited and your tutor, the primary reason a bibliography should be included in your work is to benefit your readers. It will make it much easier for them to find the sources you have cited, read those works themselves, and conduct their own research on the same topic too. Bibliographies play an essential role in sharing knowledge and advancing understanding of a subject.

When is a Bibliography Used?

We have established that bibliographic information is descriptive information about a piece of work. Now we need to assess when we will need this bibliographic information: when is a bibliography used? Bibliographies are generally used in a wide range of academic research projects and disciplines. Secondary school students, college students and distance learning students, university students and postgraduate students may all be required to create bibliographies in their academic works. The bibliography in a research paper or project is typically one of the last pages of the paper adding to the piece after your own content but before any appendices.

The terms bibliography, references and cited works are often used interchangeably, but these three are actually unique ways of referencing your work and your sources. A “Works Cited” list is an alphabetical list of works cited or sources you specifically called out while composing your paper. This differs from a bibliography because you don’t need to include any additional sources that you have read or that may have otherwise influenced your piece in a works cited list. As a general rule, this means that works cited lists are much shorter than bibliographies. Reference lists are very similar to works cited lists, but they are written in APA (American Psychological Association) format, whilst bibliographies often use the Harvard referencing system . Reference lists are arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name. Whilst cited works and reference lists are similar, bibliographies are very different. A bibliography should list all the material you have consulted in preparing your essay, whether you have actually referred to and cited the work or not. So even if you only read a page or two or a text, and don’t directly reference it in your work, it should still be included in your bibliography. For this reason, bibliographies include longer references and are significant blocks of text.

Primary and Secondary Sources

The sources that you will cite within your academic works fall into two main categories: primary sources and secondary sources. But students often have difficulty differentiating between the two. However, the differences between primary sources and secondary sources are easy to work out. If you are quoting a first-hand account of something, or an original work, then this is a primary source.

Some examples of primary sources include: news articles, photographs, autobiographies, novels and short stories, letters and diary entries, and original works of art. From a multimedia point of view, documentaries, radio broadcasts and podcasts, and recordings of music or speeches are also considered to be primary sources. Working with a primary source means that you examine the source material, analyse it, and then reach your own conclusions. If you read a novel and then write an essay about its themes, for example, then you are using the novel as your primary source and you draw your own conclusions from it. In science-based subjects, any research or data you gather for yourself, by conducting your own studies or research, is considered to be a primary source. But if you are analysing data that has been gathered by someone else then this is then considered to be a secondary source. This example is important because it demonstrates that primary sources don’t always have to be documents you have created yourself: if you’re taking raw data that has been produced by someone else then this is still considered a primary source.

Secondary sources differ from primary sources because they are further removed from them. If a piece of art is the primary source, for example, then an essay analysing that piece of art would be considered to be a secondary source. Other examples of secondary sources include: textbooks that discuss other concepts, theories, or source material, biographies written about other famous figures, works written by critics or other academics and key political commentary. In short, a primary source provides direct access to material which you can then discuss and analyse, whilst a secondary source requires you to look at the material through the lens of another person or another point of view. If you are reading another critic’s analysis of a work, then their perspective is likely to have some influence on your critical approach or opinion. For this reason, many academics believe primary sources to be more reliable than secondary sources. But that is a one-dimensional approach: working with secondary sources can be beneficial because it allows you to understand how others perceive the work you are discussing. It also provides a clear insight into the cultural perspective that surrounds the work.

Types of Bibliography

There is no singular type of bibliography: different kinds of academic work require different kinds of bibliography, and they are each laid out and formatted slightly differently. Some of the main types of bibliography that you need to be aware of include:

• Analytical bibliography. This is a bibliography that analyses the route that a work makes from its initial manuscript stage to publication. When creating an analytical bibliography you should not only detail the high-level information about a cited source, such as the title and the name of the author, but also more specific details about the work, such as its number of pages, any illustrations it includes, and even the type of binding it is held together with.
• Annotated bibliography. As the name suggests, this type of bibliography includes annotations. An annotation is a short note that concisely and clearly explains why you chose each of your sources. Each annotation included within an annotated bibliography is usually just a few sentences long but will provide your readers with valuable insight into your view of the source. Although they are similar to literature review bibliographies, annotated bibliographies do not discuss how the research is conducted in the same level of depth.
• National bibliography. Source material is categorised into groups depending on where they were published, or the time period in which they were published. Often texts in a national bibliography are organised by region or nation.
• Personal bibliography. If you have included a range of pieces in your essay that are unpublished works, or hard-to-find works, then a personal bibliography is the best way to list these. This type of bibliography is best used for academic pieces that focus on multiple works by the same author: biographically focused pieces, for example.
• Corporate bibliography. As the name implies, a corporate bibliography will group sources in relation to specific organisations or corporations.
• Subject bibliography. Finally, sources within subject bibliographies are grouped depending on which subjects they cover. Generally, these bibliographies list primary and secondary sources, which makes them more in-depth. Other bibliographies on this list may not always outline both primary and secondary sources in this way.

Information Required from Print Sources

All of the bibliographic material that you will need from print sources can be found on their title page. The information that you will need to include in your citation will depend on the type of bibliography that you are compiling, but regardless of what citation style is being used, there are key pieces of information that you will always need to collect in order to create the citation in a bibliography. This information is:

• The name of the author you are citing.
• The title of the publication you are citing.
• Article title (if using a journal or magazine article).
• The volume number of the journal, magazine or encyclopaedia you are citing, or the edition you are citing in the case of a printed publication.
• Date of publication.
• Place of publication.
• Page number(s) relevant to your research, and that you are citing within your work.

Information Required from Web Sources

The way in which you will cite a website or other web sources differs from the way in which you would cite a traditional printed text. The way in which you will cite a web source will depend on whether you are citing an online article or a web page. In the case of a web article, you will need to share:

• The author and/or editor name of the web piece that you are citing.
• The title of the website that you are citing.
• Company or organisation that owns or posts to the website.
• URL (website address).
• The date that you accessed the information you are citing and, where possible, the date that the information you are citing was originally published.

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Bibliography in an Essay: What You Need to Know

Table Of Contents

What is a bibliography in an essay, how to write a bibliography for an essay, what should you write in a bibliography for an essay, what citation styles can you use in an essay bibliography, what are the different types of bibliographies, why should you take our bibliography service online.

Do you want to know what is a bibliography in an essay ? Also, if you want to understand how to cite sources well using proper citation styles, this blog will help you learn about them in detail. While writing an essay, most students forget to cite sources correctly, which increases the chance of plagiarism in their content. To avoid such situations, experts say it is necessary to cite sources using correct citation styles such as MLA, APA, etc. This will keep your content authentic and plagiarism-free. Moreover, mention all of them after citing sources on your essay bibliography page. But if you don't know what is a bibliography in an essay , then read the upcoming section.

An essay bibliography, or reference list, is created to list down all the sources from which you took the information or cited it while writing an essay. The main purpose of creating a bibliography essay page is to give credit to the original writers for providing you and the readers with information about the topic. Generally, this page is created at the end of the essay. It is necessary to properly cite the sources to keep your content plagiarism-free, and it will increase the essay's credibility. But one must create this page by following the specific formatting guidelines from the UK universities. So, in the next section, you will learn how to write a essay bibliography step by step.

You don't know how to write bibliography essay, so here are some simple steps that you can follow to achieve success. These steps will help you create an essay's bibliography quickly.

• Firstly, collect citation information.
• Now, list all the sources in alphabetical order and the author's last name.
• If the author's name is unavailable, then you can write the source name or title of the page.
• List down all the sources in a consistent manner.
• Write down the sources line by line; don't merge the two.
• Finally, place the essay bibliography page at the end.

This is a clear and quick ways to create a bibliography in an essay in one go. However, you can use our essay writing services if you cannot do so. Furthermore, if you want to level up your learning and know what you must include in your bibliography, then read ahead.

When you create a bibliography in an essay , always remember to list all the cited sources in detail. In addition, it should include the following:

• Name of the author or authors
• Title of the source
• Publisher's name
• Date of Publication
• Page Number of the Source

Remember these points while writing a bibliography in an essay to avoid mistakes. Now, let's move to the next section to know about citation styles you can use in your bibliography.

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There are numerous referencing styles that you can use to write a bibliography. But before doing so, it is vital to check the exact format of citing sources. No matter your citation style, it must be in the correct format. This shows you are serious and paying attention while working on your essays. A slight mistake can have a huge impact on your work. So, here is the list of citation styles you can use with the set format.

1. APA Citation Style

• Author's Name
• Date of publication
• Page number

2. MLA Citation Style

• Author's last name
• Author's first name
• Title of the book
• City of publication
• Publication date

3. Harvard Citation Style

• Author(s) surname
• Author(s) initial
• Title of the article
• Title of the journal
• Publication information (volume number, issue number)
• Publishing day and month

4. Chicago Citation Style

• Author(s) first name, last name
• Place of publication and publication year
• Page numbers

5. Oxford Citation Style

• Author name
• Journal title
• Conference name
• Place of publication
• Page number(s), if any

You can use these citation styles to write a bibliography in an essay . But, if you are facing an issue you can take reference from bibliography essay examples . So, maybe now you know how many citation styles you can use while creating a bibliography page and the difference between them. Let's proceed further and learn about the different types of bibliographies.

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There are three types of bibliographies that you can use in an essay, which are listed below:

1. Enumerative Bibliography

In an enumerative bibliography, the sources are listed in a specific order. This type of bibliography is often used by students while writing essays.

Our experts say to write a well-organised enumerative bibliography, first mention the author, subject, date, or another criterion. Moreover, the other thing you must remember is language or time.

2. Analytical Bibliography

An adequate analytical bibliography consists of information about printers and booksellers, paper and binding descriptions, or a discussion of the problems that occur when the book turns from a manuscript to a published book.

3. Annotated Bibliography

To write an annotated bibliography in a proper manner, you must arrange the sources in alphabetical order. Moreover, you must remember to add annotations about the source while writing it. This is done to provide information related to the content of each reference, so one can evaluate the source's usefulness later.

These are the different types of essay bibliography. If you want to know about writing it, you can search for essay bibliography example online or take help from our experts. They know how to write all types of bibliographies effectively, so they can assist you quickly. Therefore, to know why you should buy essay online from us, the following are in the next section.

Also Read:  Student's Handbook on How to Write a Bibliography

Still confused about what is a bibliography in an essay . Not to worry; hire our experts and ease your work. We have a team of PhD-qualified experts who can help you to understand how to write a bibliography for an essay. No matter your challenges while writing it, we can help you from start to finish. You only require to pay for essay , and we will handle all your essay-writing worries. Therefore, get assistance from our experts in writing essays and creating a bibliography. We will resolve all your doubts and fulfil all your academic writing needs.

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How to write a good annotated bibliography?

Choose your format, evaluate your sources, write the annotation, proofread the annotated bibliography, view samples, how to evaluate your work.

An annotated bibliography is a piece of writing where you list sources, quotations and a short description from you. The goal of this task is to show your readers that your research is worth reading and it provides some specific value. You will also provide your readers with the information of how accurate and reliable your research is. Listing the sources is easy, but if you have over a hundred items, you will have difficulties with writing short descriptions and finding the best suiting citations. We value your time, so we can offer you our help with this task.

We’re offering you an annotated bibliography writing service where we will take a list of your books, articles and other sources and do this task for you. Here’s how we do it:

• You place an order on the site or send us a pm;
• We get the list of books from you and you give us your requirements;
• We analyze your sources, pick up the right quotes and craft short stories;
• You get the annotated bibliography essay on time.

You will save your time and you won’t need to try to fit a huge amount of information into a tiny paragraph. We guarantee a high quality of our work as we have a team of experienced writers.

How to write a bibliography essay: a step-by-step guide

There are three main approaches that you need to follow if you want to cope with the task yourself:

• A brief story;
• A thorough analysis;
• A complete library research.

Start with noting down or taking photos of the books, documents, other papers or any other resources that you have on the list. You will have plenty at the end to choose from. You will use these notes and photos to express your thoughts the right way.

There are two major types of the style that you can use in your academic papers: APA or MLA It’s good to find out which one you have to use before you start as you will spend much time trying to correct everything. The difference between the styles is in the position of the name of the author, book title, the publishing year and so on. The format for the annotation is one for both styles. The length of the annotation can be from one sentence to a few pages. The best way to find out how much you need to write is to ask you professor.

Don’t rush and think critically regarding the information that is presented in the book or the article. The process of evaluation is the following:

• You like it or not;
• You get the core message of the book or not;
• The information is related to the topic or not;
• The information is reliable or not;
• There are phrases or sentences for citations or not;
• There are any evaluation reviews for this source or not;
• You can find out the author’s credentials or not;
• The source is upt-date or not;
• Your professor approves this source or not.

Start writing your bibliography essay with a summary of the book. Think of the main ideas, arguments and topics that are described in the source. Ask yourself what this very source is about and think how would you answer to someone else. Think if it provides any value for people. Mention why you have chosen this source and if the information in it is reliable. Write how this source is related to the topic of your research and add a few words how it helped you to research the topic.

It’s an obvious step but there are many students that ignore it. The thing here is that you should be pretty much attentive to every period, coma, bracket or any other punctuation mark that you are using. The bibliography can be short and easy for revising. But if you have a list of 50 sources with long annotations, you will need a few days for proofreading.

You won’t be able to use any software. You will need to check every single detail especially if it’s your first try. Once you think that the job is done, take a nap or rest a while and come back to proofreading again. We recommend you to do at least three checks with some rest in between. This will make your brain notice even the slightest drawbacks.

It’s better to take this step before you write your own text or when you feel you’ve run out of ideas. You can see the style and you can see the way someone has crafted the annotation. Keep in mind that the bibliography for essay differs from the one in dissertation. Take a look at the structure of the annotation, what comes first and how the author expresses personal position. Of course, you can find some bad samples that will guide you to the wrong way, so don’t treat all the samples to be examples to follow.

Most of the students feel unsure about the value of their own work. Of course, you can choose the annotated bibliography writing service to assist you, but let’s talk about the evaluation of your own work. The first thing to do is reading your annotation as if you were someone else. Read aloud and record your reading. Ask anyone from your friends to listen to your reading. If you think that everything is awful, have some rest and show your annotation to your professor. And you will surely know what to do next.

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NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

David Folkenflik

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument. Uri Berliner hide caption

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument.

NPR has formally punished Uri Berliner, the senior editor who publicly argued a week ago that the network had "lost America's trust" by approaching news stories with a rigidly progressive mindset.

Berliner's five-day suspension without pay, which began last Friday, has not been previously reported.

Yet the public radio network is grappling in other ways with the fallout from Berliner's essay for the online news site The Free Press . It angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization .

In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR's journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," she said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

The network noted that "the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions."

In an interview with me later on Monday, Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization.

"We're looking for a leader right now who's going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about," Berliner said. "And this seems to be the opposite of that."

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month. Stephen Voss/Stephen Voss hide caption

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month.

He said that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders and to Maher's predecessor as chief executive before publishing his essay.

Berliner has singled out coverage of several issues dominating the 2020s for criticism, including trans rights, the Israel-Hamas war and COVID. Berliner says he sees the same problems at other news organizations, but argues NPR, as a mission-driven institution, has a greater obligation to fairness.

"I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," Berliner says. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."

A "final warning"

The circumstances surrounding the interview were singular.

Berliner provided me with a copy of the formal rebuke to review. NPR did not confirm or comment upon his suspension for this article.

In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again. Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union but says he is not appealing the punishment.

The Free Press is a site that has become a haven for journalists who believe that mainstream media outlets have become too liberal. In addition to his essay, Berliner appeared in an episode of its podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss.

A few hours after the essay appeared online, NPR chief business editor Pallavi Gogoi reminded Berliner of the requirement that he secure approval before appearing in outside press, according to a copy of the note provided by Berliner.

In its formal rebuke, NPR did not cite Berliner's appearance on Chris Cuomo's NewsNation program last Tuesday night, for which NPR gave him the green light. (NPR's chief communications officer told Berliner to focus on his own experience and not share proprietary information.) The NPR letter also did not cite his remarks to The New York Times , which ran its article mid-afternoon Thursday, shortly before the reprimand was sent. Berliner says he did not seek approval before talking with the Times .

NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

Berliner says he did not get permission from NPR to speak with me for this story but that he was not worried about the consequences: "Talking to an NPR journalist and being fired for that would be extraordinary, I think."

Berliner is a member of NPR's business desk, as am I, and he has helped to edit many of my stories. He had no involvement in the preparation of this article and did not see it before it was posted publicly.

In rebuking Berliner, NPR said he had also publicly released proprietary information about audience demographics, which it considers confidential. He said those figures "were essentially marketing material. If they had been really good, they probably would have distributed them and sent them out to the world."

Feelings of anger and betrayal inside the newsroom

His essay and subsequent public remarks stirred deep anger and dismay within NPR. Colleagues contend Berliner cherry-picked examples to fit his arguments and challenge the accuracy of his accounts. They also note he did not seek comment from the journalists involved in the work he cited.

Morning Edition host Michel Martin told me some colleagues at the network share Berliner's concerns that coverage is frequently presented through an ideological or idealistic prism that can alienate listeners.

"The way to address that is through training and mentorship," says Martin, herself a veteran of nearly two decades at the network who has also reported for The Wall Street Journal and ABC News. "It's not by blowing the place up, by trashing your colleagues, in full view of people who don't really care about it anyway."

Several NPR journalists told me they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they no longer have confidence that he will keep private their internal musings about stories as they work through coverage.

"Newsrooms run on trust," NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben tweeted last week, without mentioning Berliner by name. "If you violate everyone's trust by going to another outlet and sh--ing on your colleagues (while doing a bad job journalistically, for that matter), I don't know how you do your job now."

Berliner rejected that critique, saying nothing in his essay or subsequent remarks betrayed private observations or arguments about coverage.

Other newsrooms are also grappling with questions over news judgment and confidentiality. On Monday, New York Times Executive Editor Joseph Kahn announced to his staff that the newspaper's inquiry into who leaked internal dissent over a planned episode of its podcast The Daily to another news outlet proved inconclusive. The episode was to focus on a December report on the use of sexual assault as part of the Hamas attack on Israel in October. Audio staffers aired doubts over how well the reporting stood up to scrutiny.

"We work together with trust and collegiality everyday on everything we produce, and I have every expectation that this incident will prove to be a singular exception to an important rule," Kahn wrote to Times staffers.

At NPR, some of Berliner's colleagues have weighed in online against his claim that the network has focused on diversifying its workforce without a concomitant commitment to diversity of viewpoint. Recently retired Chief Executive John Lansing has referred to this pursuit of diversity within NPR's workforce as its " North Star ," a moral imperative and chief business strategy.

In his essay, Berliner tagged the strategy as a failure, citing the drop in NPR's broadcast audiences and its struggle to attract more Black and Latino listeners in particular.

"During most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding," Berliner writes. "In recent years, however, that has changed."

Berliner writes, "For NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model."

NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner wrote in a comment for this story: "Minorities do not all think the same and do not report the same. Good reporters and editors should know that by now. It's embarrassing to me as a reporter at NPR that a senior editor here missed that point in 2024."

Some colleagues drafted a letter to Maher and NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, seeking greater clarity on NPR's standards for its coverage and the behavior of its journalists — clearly pointed at Berliner.

A plan for "healthy discussion"

On Friday, CEO Maher stood up for the network's mission and the journalism, taking issue with Berliner's critique, though never mentioning him by name. Among her chief issues, she said Berliner's essay offered "a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are."

Berliner took great exception to that, saying she had denigrated him. He said that he supported diversifying NPR's workforce to look more like the U.S. population at large. She did not address that in a subsequent private exchange he shared with me for this story. (An NPR spokesperson declined further comment.)

Late Monday afternoon, Chapin announced to the newsroom that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

"Among the questions we'll ask of ourselves each month: Did we capture the diversity of this country — racial, ethnic, religious, economic, political geographic, etc — in all of its complexity and in a way that helped listeners and readers recognize themselves and their communities?" Chapin wrote in the memo. "Did we offer coverage that helped them understand — even if just a bit better — those neighbors with whom they share little in common?"

Berliner said he welcomed the announcement but would withhold judgment until those meetings played out.

In a text for this story, Chapin said such sessions had been discussed since Lansing unified the news and programming divisions under her acting leadership last year.

"Now seemed [the] time to deliver if we were going to do it," Chapin said. "Healthy discussion is something we need more of."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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The cw opts not to renew affiliation deals with scripps-owned stations in seven markets, npr editor resigns in aftermath of his essay criticizing network for bias.

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UPDATE: The NPR editor who penned an essay criticizing the network for what he saw as bias in its coverage of Donald Trump and a host of other issues has resigned.

Uri Berliner , who had been a senior business editor and reporter, posting his resignation letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher on his X/Twitter account.

A spokesperson for the network declined to comment.

Berliner had been temporarily suspended from NPR after publishing on essay for The Free Press that called out the network for losing “an open minded spirit” and lacking viewpoint diversity. He cited, among other things, audience research showing a drop in the number of listeners considering themselves conservative.

While Berliner’s essay was immediately seized upon by right wing media as evidence of NPR’s bias, some of his colleagues criticized him for making mistakes in his piece in for using “sweeping statements” to make his case, in the words of NPR’s Steve Inskeep. Maher criticized the essay in a note to staffers, writing, “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

But Berliner’s essay did trigger some discussion within NPR, as some voices on the right, including Trump, called for defunding the network.

PREVIOUSLY: NPR has put on temporary suspension the editor who penned an essay that criticized the network for losing the trust of listeners as it has covered the rise of Donald Trump and coverage of Covid, race and other issues.

Uri Berliner has been suspended for five days without pay, starting last Friday, according to NPR’s David Folkenflik.

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“That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model,” Berliner wrote. He also wrote that “race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace,” while claiming that the network lacked viewpoint diversity.

His essay set off a firestorm on the right, with Trump blasting the network and Fox News devoting extensive coverage to the criticism, along with calls for ending government funding for NPR.

In his essay, Berliner wrote that “defunding isn’t the answer,” but that its journalism needed to change from within. The network’s funding has been a target of conservatives numerous times in the past, but lawmakers ultimately have supported public radio.

Berliner shared his suspension notice with Folkenflik, who wrote that it was for failure to seek approval for outside work, as well as for releasing proprietary information about audience demographics.

Katherine Maher, who recently became CEO of the network, published a note to staff last week that appeared to take issue with Berliner’s essay, writing that there was “a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.”

“Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions,” Maher wrote. “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

Maher herself has become a target on the right, with some figures citing her past social media posts, including one from 2020 that referred to Trump as a “deranged racist sociopath.” At the time, she was CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. In a statement to The New York Times , Maher said that “in America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen.” “What matters is NPR’s work and my commitment as its C.E.O.: public service, editorial independence and the mission to serve all of the American public,” she said.

An NPR spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. The network told The Times that Maher is not involved in editorial decisions.

Some of Berliner’s colleagues have been vocal in their own criticism of his essay. Eric Deggans, the network’s TV critic and media analyst, wrote that Berliner “set up staffers of color as scapegoats.” He also noted that Berliner “didn’t seek comment from NPR before publishing. Didn’t mention many things which could detract from his conclusions.”

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What Began as a War on Theater Won’t End There

By James Shapiro

Mr. Shapiro is the author of the forthcoming “The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.”

Productions of plays in America’s high schools have been increasingly under attack. In 2023, Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” was rejected in Tennessee (since it deals with adultery); “August: Osage County,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, was canceled in Iowa after rehearsals had begun (the community was deemed not ready for it); and in Kansas, students were not even allowed to study, let alone stage, “The Laramie Project ,” a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the murder of a gay student, Matthew Shepard.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in the Educational Theater Association’s most recent survey, 85 percent of American theater teachers expressed concern about censorship . Even Shakespeare is at risk: In Florida, new laws led to the restriction of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to grades 10 through 12 and “Romeo and Juliet” could not be taught in full to avoid falling afoul of legislation targeting “sexual conduct.” Kill off young people’s exposure to theater, and you kill off a generation of playgoers, along with the empathy and camaraderie (already in short supply) that is intrinsic to theater. According to the latest report from the National Endowment for the Arts , from 2017 to 2022 the percentage of Americans who went even once a year to see a nonmusical play dropped by roughly half, from about 10 percent to less than 5 percent.

What begins as a war on theater never ends there.

The current attacks on theater in American schools have their origins in a struggle that took place in the late 1930s, when America’s political leadership believed that the arts, no less than industry and agriculture, were vital to the health of the Republic and deserving of its financial support. There was still an implicit understanding that theater and democracy — twinborn in ancient Greece, spheres where competing visions of society could be aired and debated — were mutually dependent. Funded by Congress as part of a Works Progress Administration relief bill and established in 1935, the Federal Theater Project by 1939 had staged over 1,000 productions in 29 states, seen free or for a pittance by 30 million spectators, or roughly one in four Americans, two-thirds of whom had never seen a play before.

It brought children’s plays on touring trucks to kids in crowded cities. It staged works in Spanish, Yiddish and Italian to reach immigrants. It established what it called Negro units from Hartford, Conn., to Seattle to support Black actors and playwrights. It staged Christmas plays and classics by Shakespeare and Euripides and nurtured young playwrights and directors, including Arthur Miller and Orson Welles. It brought free theater to asylums, orphanages, hospitals, prisons and veterans’ homes. It revived playgoing in rural states where the movies had all but ended it. Ten million listeners a week tuned in to its radio broadcasts. It established ties with hundreds of educational, fraternal, civic and religious groups, strengthening communal bonds.

It turned out that Americans were hungry for plays about issues that mattered to their lives, topics largely shunned by Hollywood and the commercial stage. So they flocked to see new plays about substandard housing and the plight of struggling farmers. One of the most remarkable Federal Theater ventures was a stage version of Sinclair Lewis’s novel “It Can’t Happen Here ,” in which a fascist is elected president of the United States. It opened on the same day, Oct. 27, 1936, in 18 cities across the country, and by the time it closed, more than 379,000 Americans had seen it. The cost of these thousand or so productions to taxpayers was roughly the price of building a single battleship.

The program’s popularity contributed to its undoing. Many of those in Congress who had voted to fund the Federal Theater became frightened by its reach and impact, its interracial casting, its challenge to the status quo — frightened, too, perhaps, by the prospect of Americans across racial, economic and political divides sitting cheek by jowl in packed playhouses.

Three years after the creation of the Federal Theater, Congress authorized the establishment of what would become the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by Martin Dies of Texas. It was to supposed to spend seven months investigating the rise of Nazism, fascism and communism in America and submit a report. The ambitious Mr. Dies, desperate to have his committee’s life extended, instead focused much of his attention on a more vulnerable target: the Federal Theater, accusing it of disseminating offensive and communistic and therefore un-American values. In the course of waging and winning this battle, he assembled a right-wing playbook so pervasive that it now seems timeless. He succeeded wildly: All Federal Theater productions were abruptly terminated in 1939, and the House Un-American Activities Committee lasted until 1975. With a nascent national theater now destroyed, targeting theater in schools was the inevitable next step for his successors, who — whether cynical politicians or school board members eager to police what offends their sensibilities — have all stolen a page from the Dies playbook.

It’s hard to imagine what America would be like today had support for the Federal Theater continued and Mr. Dies’s committee not been renewed. Counterfactual history is best left to novelists. But a more vibrant theatrical culture extending across the land might well have led to a more informed citizenry and, by extension, a less divided and more equitable and resilient democracy. What happened instead was that Mr. Dies begat Joseph McCarthy, who begat Roy Cohn, who begat Donald Trump.

Some of those familiar with this history haven’t given up. Right now, artists are preparing projects that on July 27 will open simultaneously in 18 U.S. cities and towns, much as “It Can’t Happen Here” did in 1936 . Under the rubric of Arts for EveryBody, the initiative is bringing together performers, audiences, community leaders and local officials. It is a small start and a promising one. So, too, is legislation coming before Congress, the STAGE Act of 2024, that would provide badly needed support for endangered nonprofit theaters across the land. Passing it should be a no-brainer, but there’s a likelihood that the Dies playbook will be used to defeat it. Until those in power in this country pivot from suppressing theater to investing in it, it’s not just the arts but also democracy itself that remains vulnerable.

James Shapiro teaches English at Columbia University and is the author of the forthcoming “ The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Title: triforce: lossless acceleration of long sequence generation with hierarchical speculative decoding.

Abstract: With large language models (LLMs) widely deployed in long content generation recently, there has emerged an increasing demand for efficient long-sequence inference support. However, key-value (KV) cache, which is stored to avoid re-computation, has emerged as a critical bottleneck by growing linearly in size with the sequence length. Due to the auto-regressive nature of LLMs, the entire KV cache will be loaded for every generated token, resulting in low utilization of computational cores and high latency. While various compression methods for KV cache have been proposed to alleviate this issue, they suffer from degradation in generation quality. We introduce TriForce, a hierarchical speculative decoding system that is scalable to long sequence generation. This approach leverages the original model weights and dynamic sparse KV cache via retrieval as a draft model, which serves as an intermediate layer in the hierarchy and is further speculated by a smaller model to reduce its drafting latency. TriForce not only facilitates impressive speedups for Llama2-7B-128K, achieving up to 2.31$\times$ on an A100 GPU but also showcases scalability in handling even longer contexts. For the offloading setting on two RTX 4090 GPUs, TriForce achieves 0.108s/token$\unicode{x2014}$only half as slow as the auto-regressive baseline on an A100, which attains 7.78$\times$ on our optimized offloading system. Additionally, TriForce performs 4.86$\times$ than DeepSpeed-Zero-Inference on a single RTX 4090 GPU. TriForce's robustness is highlighted by its consistently outstanding performance across various temperatures. The code is available at this https URL .

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The Trump Trial’s Extraordinary Opening

The first days of the criminal case against the former president have been mundane, even boring—and that’s remarkable.

This is The Trump Trials by George T. Conway III, a newsletter that chronicles the former president’s legal troubles. Sign up here .

The defendant nodded off a couple of times on Monday. And I have to confess, as a spectator in an overflow courtroom watching on closed-circuit television, so did I.

Legal proceedings can be like that. Mundane, even boring. That’s how the first couple of days of the trial in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump , Indictment No. 71543–2023, felt much of the time. Ordinary—despite being so extraordinary. And, frankly, that was comforting. The ordinary mechanics of the criminal-litigation process were applied fairly, efficiently, and methodically to a defendant of unparalleled notoriety, one who has devoted himself to undermining the rule of law.

Certainly the setting was ordinary. When the Criminal Courts Building, at 100 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan, first opened in 1941, an architectural critic lamented that the Art Deco structure, a New Deal/Public Works Administration project, was “ uncommunicative .” Eight decades later, it still has little to say. Raw and spartan, it’s a bit of a mystery to people who aren’t familiar with it (including me, a civil litigator who, despite having been admitted to the New York state bar some 35 years ago, practiced mostly in federal and Delaware courts). A pool reporter yesterday described the surroundings as “drab.”

Drab indeed, but busy—very busy. There’s never a want of bustle here, of the sort you would expect. As the former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann put it this week, 100 Centre is, “well, Dickensian—a beehive of activity with miscreants, state prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, probation officers, court security [and] families—in dark, dingy halls and courtrooms.” It’s a bit like New York City as a whole: How it functions, with the volume it handles, never ceases to amaze.

And how the court manages to keep track of things, Lord only knows. In contrast with the federal courts or even New York’s civil courts, it has no electronic, publicly accessible docket. The Supreme Court of the State of New York for the County on New York, Criminal Term, is, as one courthouse reporter said last month, “stuck in the past.” It’s a tribunal “where the official record is a disorganized and incomplete mass of paper with no accounting of what’s inside.” The records come in brown accordion folders—Redwelds, lawyers call them—and what judges and clerks decide to put in them is the record, and what they don’t is not.

But somehow it works. Somehow the court manages to dispose of thousands of cases a year, involving all manner of defendants and offenses. A calendar emailed to journalists by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office listing the week’s anticipated court appearances gives you the flavor. It catalogs names seemingly of many ethnicities, with a couple of corporate entities to boot. A hodgepodge of alleged charges, including the violent and the corrupt: robbery, conspiracy, forgery, criminal mischief, identity theft, enterprise corruption, stalking, murder, attempted murder, sex trafficking, grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, possession of a forged instrument, offering a false statement for filing.

And the list contained three cases involving the crime of falsifying business records, one of which was set for trial on Monday, April 15, in Part 59, Courtroom 1530— People v. Trump .

Nothing on the calendar, other than the defendant’s readily recognizable name, would have told you there was anything special about the case. In that sense, it was ordinary. But the hubbub outside—a handful of protesters, multiple television cameras, and a long line for the press and other spectators—made clear that something somewhat special was afoot. An overflow courtroom down the hall from the main courtroom offered a closed-circuit television feed of the proceedings. Those who had lined up went through an extra set of security screeners and machines—mandated, we were told, by the United States Secret Service.

But still, so much was ordinary—the stuff of the commencement of a criminal trial, housekeeping of the sort you’d see in virtually any court about to try a criminal case. That began promptly at 10 a.m. on Monday, when Judge Juan Merchan assumed the bench. There were loose ends for the judge to tie up, pending motions to decide. Merchan denied the defendant’s motion to recuse, reading, in even tones, an opinion from the bench. The motion was frivolous; the result unsurprising. And then the parties argued some motions in limine—pretrial efforts to exclude evidence.

For example, would the notorious Access Hollywood tape that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign be played for the jury?  The prosecution said it should be: An assistant district attorney said the tape would elucidate why the defendant and his campaign were so hell-bent, to the point of falsifying business records, on keeping additional instances of the defendant’s miscreant conduct with women out of the public eye. The defense, of course, argued that playing the tape would be prejudicial. After all, this wasn’t a case about sexual assault.

The judge allowed that the tape’s existence provided context for the business-records charges but ruled that actually showing the tape to the jury would be prejudicial. Instead, the jury would be given a transcript. And speaking of sexual assault, prosecutors tried to get in an excerpt from Trump’s deposition in the E. Jean Carroll sexual-assault and defamation cases in which Trump testified that he was a “star,” and that stars historically get to do to women what Trump said on the Access Hollywood tape that he liked to do to them. Judge Merchan rightly said no, he would not allow the jury to hear that. It would be too much, too beside the point of what this case (unlike the Carroll cases) is actually about.

But as unusual and colorful as the factual predicate for the evidentiary motions was, the argument wasn’t all that interesting. It was rather low-key, in fact. Perhaps that was because none of the proffered evidence was new. But it was also because the arguing of pretrial evidentiary motions, however crucial they may be (although these, frankly, weren’t), is seldom scintillating. I can’t imagine that Donald Trump and I were the only ones watching who dozed off.

Then came jury selection, which took the rest of Monday, all of yesterday, and will probably consume tomorrow and Friday as well. (The judge will be handling his other cases today.) That was a bit more interesting, but slow going at first. Again, the ordinary met the extraordinary. Ninety-six potential jurors were brought in. The judge provided an overview of the case in the broadest terms, describing the charges in a few sentences; explained what his role and what the jury’s would be; and read the names of the cast of characters (some would be witnesses, others would simply be mentioned, including—full disclosure—my ex-wife). Still, it was mundane. It was pretty much what a judge would say in any big case.

And jury selection was a bit tedious; in a case like this, it simply has to be. Jurors were asked to give oral answers—some 42 of them, including a number with multiple subparts—to a written questionnaire. In substance: Where do you live? What do you do? What’s your educational background? What news sources do you read? What’s your experience with the legal system? Have you ever been to a Trump rally or followed him on social media? Have you belonged to any anti-Trump groups? And on and on and and on. But the most important inquiries came toward the end of the list: questions asking whether the prospective jurors could be fair. Occasionally the judge would interject, when an unusual or unclear answer was given. And once in a while there was a moment of levity: One woman—in response to a question about having relatives or close friends in the legal field—noted that she had once dated a lawyer. “It ended fine,” she volunteered, with a flatness of tone that betrayed no hint of nostalgia or loss.

This process took well over a day, and included brief follow-up questioning—“voir dire”—by the lawyers for both sides. But the judge did take a shortcut, one that saved a great deal of effort: After describing the case, but before proceeding to the individual-by-individual, question-by-question process, he asked the entire group the bottom-line question: Do any of you think you couldn’t judge the case fairly? Roughly two-thirds of this first batch of potential jurors said they couldn’t. That was extraordinary—a reflection of the fact that everyone knows who the defendant is, and that not many people lack a strong opinion about him.

And during the lawyers’ voir dire, a few interesting moments did occur, mostly when Trump’s lawyers pulled out social-media posts that they claimed showed possible bias on the part of the remaining candidates in the jury pool. One man was stricken by the court for cause because he once posted that Trump should be locked up.  The Trump lawyers attempted, but failed, to get the court to strike a woman whose husband had posted some joking commentary about the former president. The judge’s response: That’s all you have? He allowed the juror to stay, and left it to counsel to decide whether to use their limited number of peremptory strikes.

In the end, for two days, the extraordinary intertwined with the ordinary, as it should in a case like this one. As one young woman from the Upper East Side, now to be known as Juror No. 2,  put it during the selection process, “No one is above the law.” Let’s hope that sentiment prevails.