hello my name is chelsea seaburn welcome to the smart student this channel is all about helping online college students in their online college programs today i'm going to be talking about how to write an annotated bibliography formatted in apa 7th edition i'm going to start with what it is why it matters and then i'm going to walk you through a real example and show you the proper formatting and the three different types of annotations if that sounds like something you're interested in go ahead and give this video a thumbs up and let's get started alright so what is an annotated bibliography well an annotated bibliography is one of those abstract assignments that i feel like always trips up college students but it's not as complicated as you would think so let's break this down annotate means to provide notes and a bibliography is simply a list of references referred to in an academic source aka your reference list so an annotated bibliography is to provide notes on your reference list that's all it is is making notes for each source listed in your reference list and by doing this you are thoroughly assessing and organizing your research but all right let's go ahead and move on to the example portion so that way i can go over formatting and the different types of annotations you can write by the way if you're finding value in this video don't forget to give it a like subscribe comment down below it's your guys interactions and support of this channel that allows me to keep doing what i do so thank you for being here so first and foremost every annotation is cooked up from the same two ingredients you have your citation and the annotation basically if you were to take a reference list and just add notes under each citation you would have an annotated bibliography and that's exactly what you should remember when it comes to formatting the only differences come into play whether your annotated bibliography is a standalone assignment or if it's a part of a larger assignment so let's go ahead and go through each one and i can point those out to you so let's go ahead and start with the annotated bibliography as if it were a standalone assignment a standalone assignment simply means that your annotated bibliography is all you're assigned to do it's not a part of a research paper literature review and so on so the way that a standalone annotated bibliography is different is that you need to create a title page the good news is is you would create the title page the exact same way you would as if this were any other apa formatted paper so i'm not going to go into detail here i have a full video that you can watch but i will say this you should have the page number located in the upper right hand corner you will have a title and this is the part that is the most different from if this were a part of a greater project basically you're going to create a title just as if this were a research paper you're going to name it something that is relative to what your annotations are about once you have your title you'll go ahead and finish filling in the rest of your title page next you'll want to insert one page break so your annotated bibliography can begin on the next page the first thing you'll want to do is copy and paste the title please note how it follows the same formatting as it would on the title page meaning that it's bolded it's centered and it's typed out in capital case the page number should continue in the right hand corner and then your annotated bibliography itself will contain a full reference list entry followed by the annotation which we'll get into this later great so now let's talk about formatting if your annotated bibliography is a part of a larger assignment meaning it's a part of a research paper literature review thesis paper dissertation whatever so your annotated bibliography will come after your paper just as your reference list would if you notice it looks a lot like your reference list except there's paragraphs attached to each reference that paragraph is your annotation so to format you'll want to make sure that the page number follows in the upper right hand corner instead of typing reference list you're going to type annotated bibliography in bold centered just like this and then all of your annotations will follow this hanging indent pattern like you see here i'd like to note that under apa 7th edition a running head is no longer required unless your professor asks you to include one if they do you can simply double click in the header banner or you can go to insert and insert your header there when it comes to the hanging indent let me show you a trick that is going to save your life alright so let's say these are the references that you're using in your annotated bibliography to format your hanging indent i think the easiest way to do this is to highlight your references and then come up here to the toolbar and use this icon to set the hanging indent you do this by first moving the left indent all the way in one half inch and then bringing the first line indent back to zero the reason this trick is awesome is because when you're creating an annotated bibliography and you hit enter your cursor will automatically go back to point zero which causes the dilemma because you need your annotation to start at the half inch mark you don't want to hit tab because it would just indent this first line in your paragraph when you need the entire paragraph indented inward so what you can do is after you type your annotation i'm going to copy and paste here is you can highlight the entire paragraph and then use this icon to move it in that half inch nice and neatly like that pretty cool huh awesome so now that your document is set up under apa formatting the next step would be to actually do some research now i'm not going to go into depth here but i am going to give you some researching pro tips to get you started basically when you're researching for your annotated bibliography i want you to think about researching smarter not harder you see there are most likely so many sources out there for you to read on your topic and for you to actually read through each one would take you hours if not days and aside from that digesting that much material would leave your head spinning so instead what you should do is read the abstract or the introduction first when you do this you're verifying that what's in that source is relevant useful and worth your time if it checks those boxes next go ahead and read the conclusion or the discussion portion this way when you've read the beginning in the ending of a source you have a pretty good snapshot of exactly what's inside from there you can be smart by being selective and you do this by choosing which details you want to read more on so let's say you read the conclusion and they make a good point that would back up your research and your assignment you can then use the table of contents or maybe the section headings depending on what type of source you're reading to read more on that point this way you don't have to sift through an entire journal article just to pick out some of the information that's useful to you my last tip is that if you are reading a source that is spot on to your research i suggest checking the reference list to that source because you can find other similar sources to read on that would be useful in your annotated bibliography now that was just scratching the researching surface but those were some of my smart research and tips where here on the smart student we work to study smarter not harder am i right fantastic so up to this point your document is set up you're researching like a pro now let's talk about the three different annotations you have summary evaluation and combination personally i think the best most effective annotation uses a combination of both which we'll get into later but let's go through each one so you understand the differences starting with the first type of an annotation which is a summary through this type you're going to be summarizing what you read in your source when you do this i suggest focusing on conclusions that were drawn and observations that were made a few different ways you can approach this is by assessing strengths and weaknesses you can outline the main arguments you can discuss the main themes the theories that were talked about or the mythologies that were used now it's really important to note here that when you're summarizing that you are paraphrasing meaning that you are writing things out in your own words not copying and pasting the author's words either verbatim or even with a few words changed if you need help with either of those either creating citations or how to paraphrase be sure to check out these videos right here but for now i will say this when it comes to paraphrasing so i have these few simple steps that i suggest doing which is read the source reflect on what you read put the source away and then write a summary about what you just read for extra brownie points you can always compare the two side by side when you're done writing your summary to make sure that nothing sounds too similar and that you grasped the concepts correctly and took away the right main points but moving on to the second type of annotation which is an evaluation an evaluative annotation will still summarize the main points and conclusions however it's going to take this a step further by also assessing and critically evaluating them when you do this you're checking that the source is accurate relevant and composed of quality research and findings and aside from that one of the most important things you're looking for when you're evaluating is that you're trying to evaluate where this research fits into your research in other words why is this source relevant and useful to you and your topic one of the easiest ways to do this is to compare this source to your other sources that you've already used so for example what's different about it why is this source different from this one you know are they looking at your topic from a different angle did they make a point that you agree with did they make a point that you disagree with and you'd like to dispute it's important to decipher between the differences of each annotations because each annotation serves a different purpose and when you know what those purposes are that's how you're going to plug and play them into your larger assignment later so let me briefly explain what i mean here's the three annotations i've chosen as an example now this annotated bibliography all of these sources are researching the topic of the effect that dieting has on mental health in this first annotation this source is demonstrating the problem so this is backing up my thesis statement by identifying the problem in this next annotation this source is suggesting a solution so while this one is about a problem this one is a solution to that problem and finally this last one talks about a story of someone who experienced problems with their mental health because of dieting so the purpose of this annotation is to provide evidence on the problem so as you can see here we have an annotation that is a problem a solution in evidence when i go to write my paper later i can use each annotation by plugging them and playing them into my paper depending on what they're about all right moving on to the final type of annotation which is a combination a combination of what well you probably guessed it a combination of summarizing and evaluating personally i like to use a 70 30 rule where i use 70 for summarizing and 30 for evaluating in my annotations the reason i suggest summarizing for 70 of your annotation is because the purpose of that annotation is to help you later on in your writing therefore i find it is much more useful to have more information about what is actually in that source rather than an evaluation of why it matters you see that evaluation is just there to remind you why you chose this source where it fits into your research and how it's relevant to your study so i find that 30 for evaluating is plenty because it's essentially just a memory refresher for you now i will disclaim real quick that if your professor asks you for anything that i'm not mentioning in this video please follow their instructions first if they want a full evaluation give them a full evaluation but anyways the last thing i'd like to do is compare an annotated bibliography to a real world example to clear up any lasting confusion you might still have so you know when you buy something new let's say something expensive like a brand new laptop when you go through that purchasing process i promise you're doing an informal annotated bibliography in a way so when you go to amazon and you read about different laptops and you read about the reviews and all about the different products you're making mental notes about those different laptops which is essentially making annotations on different sources now let's say you narrow down to a macbook pro and from there you go to a review website like wire cutter when you read a full article that is a bunch of product reviews that article is an annotated bibliography in this case someone else took the time to research for you but if you'll notice those reviews are essentially summaries and evaluations of those summaries they're just notes that are done from research and again that's all an annotated bibliography is is making notes about a source the main reason an annotated bibliography matters is because if you've been assigned to write one you'd probably like to crush it but on a deeper level it makes you more effective as a student and a researcher so if your annotated bibliography is a part of a larger assignment i actually encourage you to take the time and do it right you see i'm not a professor so i have no problem saying when an assignment is just tedious an annotated bibliography can feel tedious but it actually serves a real useful purpose anyways friends if you're still here right now thank you so much for watching and supporting this channel i say it every single time but it's you guys your support which allows me to keep doing this making videos for you by the way if you want to become a part of the smart student community there's a link down in this description to my facebook group go ahead and click that join in i'd love to have you there but as always don't forget to give this video a big thumbs up share with your friends and of course subscribe for more videos like this every week thank you