Basic APA bibliography formatting and rules.
An annotation is more than just a brief summary of an article, book, web site, or other type of publication. An annotation should give enough information to make a reader decide whether to read the complete work. In other words, if the reader were exploring the same topic as you, is this material useful and if so, why?
While an abstract also summarizes an article, book, web site, or other type of publication, it is purely descriptive. Although annotations can be descriptive, they also include distinctive features about an item. Annotations can be evaluative and critical as we will see when we look at the two major types of annotations.
An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources (like a reference list). It differs from a straightforward bibliography in that each reference is followed by a paragraph length annotation, usually 100–200 words in length.
Depending on the assignment, an annotated bibliography might have different purposes:
There are two major types of annotated bibliographies:
A descriptive or informative annotated bibliography describes or summarizes a source as does an abstract; it describes why the source is useful for researching a particular topic or question and its distinctive features. In addition, it describes the author's main arguments and conclusions without evaluating what the author says or concludes.
For example:
McKinnon, A. (2019). Lessons learned in year one of business. Journal of Legal Nurse Consulting, 30(4), 26–28.
This article describes some of the difficulties many nurses experience when transitioning from nursing to a legal nurse consulting business. Pointing out issues of work-life balance, as well as the differences of working for someone else versus working for yourself, the author offers their personal experience as a learning tool. The process of becoming an entrepreneur is not often discussed in relation to nursing, and rarely delves into only the first year of starting a new business. Time management, maintaining an existing job, decision-making, and knowing yourself in order to market yourself are discussed with some detail. The author goes on to describe how important both the nursing professional community will be to a new business, and the importance of mentorship as both the mentee and mentor in individual success that can be found through professional connections. The article’s focus on practical advice for nurses seeking to start their own business does not detract from the advice about universal struggles of entrepreneurship makes this an article of interest to a wide-ranging audience.
An analytical or critical annotation not only summarizes the material, it analyzes what is being said. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of what is presented as well as describing the applicability of the author's conclusions to the research being conducted.
Analytical or critical annotations will most likely be required when writing for a college-level course.
For example:
McKinnon, A. (2019). Lessons learned in year one of business. Journal of Legal Nurse Consulting, 30(4), 26–28.
This article describes some of the difficulty many nurses experience when transitioning from nursing to a nurse consulting business. While the article focuses on issues of work-life balance, the differences of working for someone else versus working for yourself, marketing, and other business issues the author’s offer of only their personal experience is brief with few or no alternative solutions provided. There is no mention throughout the article of making use of other research about starting a new business and being successful. While relying on the anecdotal advice for their list of issues, the author does reference other business resources such as the Small Business Administration to help with business planning and professional organizations that can help with mentorships. The article is a good resource for those wanting to start their own legal nurse consulting business, a good first advice article even. However, entrepreneurs should also use more business research studies focused on starting a new business, with strategies against known or expected pitfalls and issues new businesses face, and for help on topics the author did not touch in this abbreviated list of lessons learned.
Basic MLA bibliography formatting and rules
An annotation may include some or all of these parts:
MLA EXAMPLE OF INFORMATIVE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
London, Herbert. "Five Myths of the Television Age." Television Quarterly 10.1
(1982): 81-89. Herbert London, the Dean of Journalism at New York
University and author of several books and articles, explains how television
contradicts five commonly believed ideas. He uses specific examples of
events seen on television, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, to
illustrate his points. His examples have been selected to contradict such
truisms as: "seeing is believing"; "a picture is worth a thousand words"; and
"satisfaction is its own reward." London uses logical arguments to support his
ideas, which are his personal opinion. He doesn't refer to any previous works
on the topic. London's style and vocabulary would make the article of interest
to any reader.
MLA EXAMPLE OF INDICATIVE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Griffin, C. Williams, ed. Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982. Ten essays on writing-across-the-curriculum
programs, teaching writing in disciplines other than English, and teaching
techniques for using writing as learning. Essays include Toby Fulwiler,
"Writing: An Act of Cognition"; Barbara King, "Using Writing in the
Mathematics Class: Theory and Practice"; Dean Drenk, "Teaching Finance
Through Writing"; Elaine P. Mairnon, "Writing Across the Curriculum: Past,
Present, and Future."
MLA EXAMPLE OF EVALUATIVE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Gurko, Leo. Ernest Hemingway and the Pursuit of Heroism. New York: Crowell,
1968. This book is part of a series called "Twentieth Century American
Writers": a Brief Introduction to the Man and his Work. After fifty pages of
straight biography, Gurko discussed Hemingway's writing, novel by novel.
There's an index and a short bibliography, but no notes. The biographical part
is clear and easy to read, but it sounds too much like a summary.
MLA EXAMPLE OF COMBINATION ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Doll, Susan and Greg Faller. "Blade Runner and Genre: Film Noir and Science
Fiction." Literature Film Quarterly 14.2 (1986): 89-100. Doll and Faller assert
that Ridley Scott's film, Blade Runner, exhibits elements of two distinct pulp
genres, film noir and science fiction. The genre cross-pollination is a reflection
of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, upon which
the movie is based. After a useful discussion of genre, the authors go on to
effectively discuss defining characteristics of both noir and sci-fi, despite the
difficulties of such a project. Through the course of accessible discussion and
useful examples from the film, the complexities involved in the combination of
genres are revealed. In addition, the article also examines the ways that noir
and sci-fi in fact complement each other, noir providing a distinct style and sci-
fi a distinct narrative direction. Both genres are also concerned with many of
the same issues, especially social constructs, ethics, and the state of being
human.