How to make a bibliography in Word

Many users, while working with Word documents, are interested in the question of how to make a bibliography in Word. A similar list of references is needed in the Word if the text of the document uses various borrowings from other sources.

A Word bibliography is a list of all sources, such as books, magazines, newspaper articles, Internet sites, etc., cited in a document. The list of used literature in Word is usually located at the end of the document.

If you do not show links to sources, then the author of this document may be accused of plagiarism, because he did not indicate where he got the information used from. Such information often refers to authoritative sources, so they give additional “weight” to this document.

There are two types of references to sources of information: author’s and digital types. How to draw up a list of references in Word depends on the requirements that come from a higher authority, the editorial board of the journal, the management of the educational institution, etc.

Links in the Word to the list of references consist of a link in the text of the document to the source in the list of references. Thanks to this, the reader will be able to quickly find out what exactly was referred to in this piece of text.

In this article, we will look at how to make a bibliography in Word in several ways. These instructions can be applied to the following versions of the application: Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, Word 2007. There may be minor differences in the Microsoft Word program interface between versions.

How to make a bibliography in Word automatically

First, we will try to create an automatic bibliography in Word. The text of the document will contain links to sources that will be added to the list of references.

Do the following in the Word text editor window:

1. Place the mouse cursor at the place in the document fragment where you need to create a link to the source of information.
2. Open the “References” tab, go to the “References and References” group.
3. In the “Style” section, you need to select a style for the link.

For socio-political and literary sources, the styles “MLA” and “APA” are usually used. In the technical literature, references with numbers are more common, such as “ISO 690 – Numerical Reference”.

If you need a list of references in Word according to GOST, select the appropriate style. In Word, the list of references according to GOST can be used in two ways: “GOST – sorted by names” or “GOST – sorted by names”.

4. First, click on the “Insert link” button, and then in the drop-down menu on the item “Add new source …”.
5. Fill in the required fields in the “Create Source” window by entering all the required information.

You need to select the source type (book, magazine, abstract, report, website, etc.) and then fill in the recommended fields. To open additional fields for a particular type of source, check the box next to “Show all bibliography fields”.

After the author’s last name, put a comma before his initials. If this book has multiple authors, check Corporate Author to include information about all authors.

6. Click on the “OK” button.
7. Add a new link to the source in the edited text in the same way.
8. Links to the Word bibliography will appear in the text of the document.

If the previously created link needs to be entered into the text again, click on the “Insert link” button, and then select it from the list of available ones.

9. After adding all sources to this text, place the mouse cursor, as a rule, at the end of the text of the document where the list of references should be located.
10. Click on the “References” icon to select the appropriate format using the built-in examples: “References”, “References”, or “Works Cited”.
11. The document will have a list of references in alphabetical order in the Word.

Adding source information to the bibliography

If there is not enough information about the literary source, you can use the “Placeholder” function. Reference placeholders do not appear in the bibliography.

Go through the following steps:

1. Click the “Insert Link” icon, select the “Add Placeholder…” command.
2. In the Placeholder Name window, come up with a name for the specific placeholder.
3. Click on Manage Sources.
4. In the Source Manager window, a question mark appears next to the placeholder name in the Current List field.

Placeholders in the current list are arranged by tag name in alphabetical order with numbers in the title.

5. Select the placeholder, click on the “Edit …” button.
6. In the Edit Source window, fill in the required information.

Digital Reference List Word (square brackets)

When creating a list of references, references in square brackets with ordinal numbers are often used. In square brackets, the number of the reference to the source, which is in the list of references, is added.

Creating a bibliography in Word is as follows:

1. Make your own bibliography.
2. Highlight the sources in the list.
3. Open the “Home” tab, go to the “Paragraph” group.
4. Click on the arrow of the “Numbering” icon, select the numbering format. the default (Arabic numeral with a dot).

The previously selected bibliography will be automatically numbered.

5. Position the cursor at the desired location in the text fragment.
6. If you need a link only to the source, then do not insert anything in square brackets – []. If you need to add a page number, insert this information in this form – [, p. 107].
7. Go to the “Insert” tab.
8. In the “Links” section, click on the “Cross-Reference” command.
9. In the “Cross-References” window, select the type of link – “Numbered List” (or “Paragraph”), and in the “Insert Link To:” field – “Paragraph Number”.

Do a similar operation with the following link located in the text of the Word document.

If after saving you started editing the file again: inserting new or deleting old references, then the numbering in the bibliography may no longer match. You can solve this problem in the following way:

1. Select the text of the document using the keys “Ctrl” + “A”.
2. Right click inside the document.
3. In the context menu that opens, click on “Update Field”.

The bibliography will be re-numbered automatically.

How to make a bibliography alphabetically in Word

In some cases, users want the bibliography in alphabetical order.

You can do this in the following way:

1. Select a bibliography.
2. If it is already numbered, click on the arrow next to the “Numbering” button.
3. In the drop-down menu in the numbering library, click the “None” format.
4. Enter the “Home” tab.
5. In the Paragraph group, click the Sort icon (AZ).
6. In the Sort Text window, click the OK button.

By default, text is sorted in ascending order.

7. Click on the “Numbering” button, and then select the type of numbering.

How to delete a bibliography in Word

The MS Word application does not provide functionality for removing unnecessary references to information sources using programmatic methods.

If you click on the “Manage Sources” icon in the “References and References” group, then in the “Source Manager” window, when you try to remove an unnecessary source from the list, you will see that the “Delete” button is not active, so you will not be able to use this functionality.

You will have to delete links to sources and the bibliography itself manually.

Do the following:

1. Click on the bibliography box.
2. Click the arrow next to the References icon.
3. In the menu that opens, click on the “Convert bibliography to text” item.
4. Highlight the contents of the bibliography block.
5. Press the “Delete” (Del) key.
6. Then manually remove references to sources in the text of the document – by highlighting the links one by one, and then pressing the “Del” key.

If there are many links, use the following method:

1. Highlight the text in the Word document.
2. Press the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “F9”.
3. As a result of this operation, all links from this document will be removed.

You will need to delete the bibliography manually.

Article Conclusions

When writing articles, abstracts, theses or other types of documents, they often refer to other sources of information. References to the sources used are placed in the list of references (cited works) located at the end of the document. The user can create a list of used literature in a Word text editor using several methods.