How to Create Annotated Bibliographies in MS Word

By Cooper Temple

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When writing research papers, an annotated bibliography is often required to provide a summary of your sources. You can create an annotated bibliography in Microsoft Word using free templates from the Microsoft Office Templates page. You can select a pre-formatted template in the proper style, such as Modern Language Association (MLA).

Step 1

Go to the “Templates” Web page for Microsoft Office. Type “annotated bibliography” into the search field and click the “Search” key. A list of available templates that have annotated bibliographies will appear. Click the “Word” icon in the left pane to include templates compatible with Word.

Step 2

Click the thumbnail for the template that you want to use. Click “Download." Click “Accept” to agree to the download terms and begin the download. The annotated bibliography template will automatically open in Word.

Step 3

Follow the instructions for the template you downloaded to add resources to the annotated bibliography. Using a book citation in a basic template as an example, highlight and replace the text for the first and last name of the author, as well as the title of the book. Highlight and replace the appropriate publication information, such as place, publisher and year of publication. Replace the template's annotation with a brief paragraph that describes and evaluates the reference in your own words. The annotation should be about 150 words in length.

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