Annotated Bibliography
Build an entry from its three parts, with the mechanical checks a marker will notice.
Evaluative — plus how good and how useful it is · target 120–200 words.
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target 120–200
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- !All three parts presentMissing: summary, evaluation, reflection. An annotation that only summarises is the commonest way to lose marks.
- !Length within the target0 words is short of the 120-word floor for this type.
- ✓Evaluation is not the shortest partThe evaluation carries real weight against the summary.
- ✓No direct quotationNothing is quoted, which is what an annotation wants — paraphrase shows you understood it.
- ✓First person used sparinglyNo first-person pronouns. Note that many styles do allow them in the reflection.
- ✓No runaway sentencesAverage sentence 0 words, none over 40.
- ✓Citation suppliedThe entry opens with its citation, as it must.
These are mechanical checks — counts and patterns visible in the text. Whether the evaluation is any good is a judgement no word count can make.
An annotated bibliography entry is a citation followed by a short paragraph doing three jobs: summarising the source, evaluating it, and saying what it does for your project. Most marks are lost by writing only the first.
The three moves, and why the second one is the point
Summarising is the easy part, and it is the part that feels like work — you read the thing, you say what it said. But a summary proves only that you read it. The evaluation is what proves you can judge it: who wrote it and on what authority, how strong the evidence is, what the method cannot see, where the argument is weakest. That is the move a marker is looking for, and it is the one most often missing.
The third move is the one that makes a bibliography annotated rather than merely descriptive. It answers a question only you can answer: what is this source doing in your project? A source that supports your argument, one that complicates it, and one that you intend to argue against all deserve entries, and the reflection is where that difference gets recorded.
How long, and why it varies
A descriptive annotation runs about 75 to 120 words and stops at the summary. An evaluative one runs to roughly 120 to 200 and adds the judgement. An extended critical annotation can reach 300. The brief decides which you are writing, and it is worth checking before you start, because an entry that is the wrong type is not fixed by being well written.
one paragraph, not three; the citation carries a hanging indent
- 1 Write the citation first, in the required style. APA, MLA, Chicago or Harvard — whatever the brief says. Entries are alphabetised by it.
- 2 Summarise in two or three sentences. The question the source asks, how it went about answering it, and what it found. Paraphrase, do not quote.
- 3 Evaluate it. Author’s standing, quality and quantity of evidence, method, scope, any bias. Be specific: “a sample of 40 undergraduates” beats “a small sample”.
- 4 Say what it does for you. Which part of your argument it supports, undermines or reframes — and if you will argue against it, say so here.
- 5 Join them into one paragraph and check the length. The three parts are a drafting aid, not a structure the reader sees. An evaluative annotation lands around 120 to 200 words.
What each type is for
Check the brief before drafting — writing the wrong type well still loses marks.
| Type | Length | Contains | Set when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Descriptive | 75–120 words | Summary only | The task is to map what exists on a topic |
| Evaluative | 120–200 words | Summary and evaluation | The commonest brief at undergraduate level |
| Extended critical | 200–300 words | All three, argued at length | A dissertation or a literature review stage |
What the checks here can and cannot tell you
The tool counts words per section, counts sentences, and looks for patterns that are visible in the text: a missing section, an evaluation dwarfed by the summary, quotation marks where paraphrase belongs, sentences over forty words, first-person pronouns beyond a handful. Each of those is a real and common failure, and each is something a machine can genuinely detect.
What no count can do is judge whether the evaluation is any good. “The evidence is weak” and “the study measures self-reported behaviour rather than observed behaviour, so it cannot support the causal claim it makes” have the same word count and are not the same sentence. The checks are there to catch the structural problems so you can spend your attention on the part that needs judgement.
Two conventions worth knowing. Entries go in alphabetical order by the citation, exactly as in a reference list — not grouped by theme unless the brief asks for it. And the annotation is one paragraph, indented under its citation; the three-part split exists only while you draft. If your brief asks for headed subsections instead, follow the brief, since local requirements vary more here than in most academic formats.