Annotate This

I'm sure we can all remember the much loathed annotated bibliography assigned to us in our English courses. "More writing?" you probably fumed to yourself while cursing out your instructor. The truth is, what seemed pointless to us in school may turn out to be our best friend when actually foregoing our own writing endeavors.

The annotated bibliography, for those who don't already know, differs from a normal bibliography in the fact that a description of a source is included after the source's citation. Think of it as a cheat sheet to your own research. Instead of revisiting each of your sources to figure out what they dealt with, your annotated bibliography is there to refresh your mind without you ever having to flip a page. It is a tool that you will find invaluable when working on any size of project.

The next time you are assigned the fearsome annotated bibliography, don't think of it as a pointless waste of time. Use the assignment as a practice session for a future application in your own writing projects. You never know when an annotated bibliography might be the very thing you need to push a project forward.