The University of Southern Mississippi Libraries

Citing Sources: The Bibliography

What is a Bibliography?
The Bibliography is located at the end of your paper and contains all the works that you have cited in your paper and any relevant materials that you used to develop the content of your paper. Though the bibliography may contain a lot of the same information found in your foot/endnotes, the bibliography puts everything together to show the entire breadth of your research and to identify sources for readers doing their own research.

Formatting a Bibliography
Title your page Bibliography. Citations are single-spaced and a hanging indentation is used. (Click here to view and print formatting directions for setting up the Bibliography in Microsoft Word 2007.)

The sources in a Bibliography are listed alphabetically by the author's last name. General rules:

If there is no author/editor given, alphabetize using the next element in the citation - generally the title.
List all the authors no matter how many (do not use et al. in a bibliography).
If there are two or more works by the same author or group of authors, arrange those citations alphabetically by name first then by the title (excluding articles a, an, the, etc.). Type the author(s)' name for the first entry but for all the other entries (citations) after the first, replace the name(s) with 3 dashes (see example below).

Sources That May be Omitted from a Bibliography

newspaper articles
classical, medieval and early English literary works
Bible and other sacred works
well-known reference works
brief published works such as reviews, abstracts or pamphlets

unpublished interviews and personal communications
individual documents in unpublished manuscript collections
artwork or other visual sources, live performances and tv and radio programs
the U.S. Constitution, legal cases, and other public documents

Some General Rules for Citations

Titles of books and journals appear in italics.
Article titles and titles of book chapters, essays, and short stories appear in "quotes."
If an author isn't given, begin with the title.
If more than one author is given, the first author is Last Name, First Name but second and third authors should be listed First Name Last Name.
Example: Gillespie, Paula and John Smith.
When citing an online source, include the URL and the date you accessed the material.
For Web sites include as much information as possible including author, title of the page, title of the site, publisher or owner of the site, URL and access date. Use desciptive phrases for content from informal sites when titles are lacking (personal home page, fan site, etc.).

For more rules and examples of citations, visit USM Libraries' Turabian Style Guide, 7th ed. or view a copy of Turabian's A Manual for Writers at the Information Services desk.

The element that is usually listed first in a Bibliography entry is:

Title of the book or article

Author's last name (if an author is given)