7 Key Differences Between Bibliography Vs Works Cited

Often a fresher enter a college and get confused by the difference between Bibliography vs Work Cited. If you are a college fresher, then you might be new to concepts like referencing, and its impact on the originality of a solution. Plagiarism, or copying content from other authors, can lower your academic grades, and expel you from college. Does that mean that you only have to rely on your personal knowledge to craft a solution? Obviously not; cite and reference the source materials to save your writing from getting plagiarized.

By now, several questions may burst into your head, like:

1. What do reference and citation mean?
2. Is avoiding plagiarism the only purpose of referencing?
3. How to differentiate the commonly used referencing styles?

Read this blog post to end your confusion. Plus, learn the differences between Bibliography and Work Cited along with the most popular citation styles.

What Is Referencing?

Students often confuse citing with referencing. Citations are short references.  When you highlight the areas in the body of the academic paper that you have written while taking ideas from other writers or published content, you term it as citing or in-texting a text. However, referencing is acknowledging the work with a detailed description of the source.

In simple terms, you can call referencing the method of appreciating someone else’s work that you have used to uplift your thought in the academic paper. A reference usually consists of the name of the creator or author of the content, the publication date, the publisher’s name, and the location. If you source the content from online content, you need to add an additional URL or DOI.

However, these few lines do not clarify what referencing is all about. Let’s learn the ways you can reference a paper.

How Many Ways Can You Reference A Paper?

You can create a list of references in a paper in a variety of ways. The most popular methods of referencing are:

1. Work Cited
2. Works Consulted
3. Annotated Bibliography
4. Bibliography

Among these, Bibliography and Work Cited are typically used. However, the reference listing method can vary with each referencing style. For example, Work Cited only creates reference entries in MLA while Bibliography develops these entries in multiple styles like MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian, Vancouver, Harvard, Oxford, and many more.

After learning all these details on referencing you might wonder which style you should use to cite your document or what is the difference between the most used referencing styles – Bibliography and Work Cited? To get these details, you must first know why you should reference a loaned knowledge you have shared in your paper.

Why Should You Reference An Article?

Listed below are the reasons why you should reference various sources:

1. Make the writing stand out: It helps to show how your writing is different from other writers, especially when other writers create similar papers.
2. Help readers to study further: Readers who are interested in the subject discussed in the document get a link to study or learn more about the content.
3. Highlight the originality of content: References highlight the crispness and originality of the research. Hence it saves from facing plagiarism issues.

Now that you know the basics of referencing styles, next, let’s dig deep into the details of the Bibliography and work cited.

What Is a Bibliography?

A Bibliography is a list of cited references. It may include all external literature or other sources in-texted in the academic solution. You can list all referenced books written by other authors, articles, journals, periodicals, transcripts, plays, screenplays, or non-print sources from the internet in the Bibliography. Usually, it is placed as an appendix after the conclusion. In case you cite a letter, website, or article in your assignment or research paper, don’t forget to mention in it the Bibliography.

Definition of Work Cited

The term Work Cited or References is the list of quotes and text cited in an academic paper. Typically, you can list citations at the end of an academic essay, dissertation, research paper, or project. However, the list of references is termed differently depending on the citation style followed. For MLA citation style, the reference list is termed as “Works Cited” while other styles call it “References.”

You can cite the following types of details on a Works Cited page:

1. Direct quotes
2. Summaries data
3. Facts
4. General information

Basic Components of a Bibliography

While writing a Bibliography, you must include the following details:

1. Author or editor’s name
2. Title of work, (with its edition, volume, and title of the book, for citing a book’s chapter or a book with multiple authors)
3. Name of the publisher and location in which it is published
4. Page number (if multiple pages are cited)

Format of Creating Works Cited Page

To format Works Cited remember to include the following details:

1. Create a heading titled Work Cited at the top of the page; align it to the center.
2. Alphabetize the sources, beginning each entry with the last name of the author
3. Quote each poem, story, or web page title, you enlist
4. Italicize book or website titles and add a colon
5. Place a comma between the name of the publisher and its publishing year and add a period in the end.
6. Mention the medium from which the information is sourced.
7. If the data is accessed from the web, add its date of access.

It might be difficult to understand the differences between a Bibliography and a work cited unless you know their similarities.

Similarities between Bibliography and Works Cited

Before we learn the differences between Works Cited vs. Bibliography, let’s uncover any if there are similarities between the two types of referencing. If you have read this blog post in detail by now you must have observed the following similarities:

1. Placement: Both these referencing styles are placed at the end of the academic paper
2. Arrangement: All the entries in both, the Bibliography and Works Cited are arranged in alphabetical order, starting with the last name of the author.

Key Differences between Bibliography vs. Works Cited

The Bibliography and Works Cited are quite in contrast to each other. While working on these citation styles, you will notice these7 key differences:

1. Definition

1. Bibliography: Indicates a list of external materials cited in the scholarly articles, typed at the end of the document.
2. Works Cited: All resources or literature referenced in the body of the assignment paper is enlisted in the Works Cited.

2. Content

1. Bibliography: All cited and referred sources taken ideas from or quoted in the academic paper or book is mentioned in the Bibliography.
2. Works Cited: Only sources cited in the academic paper are a part of the Works Cited page.

3. Uses

1. Bibliography: It is a part of documents that has a higher academic purpose; for example, journals and books.
2. Work Cited: serves lower academic purposes. Therefore, it is used for writing essays and undergraduate research papers.

4. The type of work included

1. Bibliography: Any work that is not used in writing the paper does not become a part of the Bibliography.
2. Work Cited: All works that are not cited but taken inspiration from can become a part of the work cited

5. Length:

1. Bibliography: It is not specific and tends to be longer than work-cited entries
2. Works Cited: All entries are specific and are shorter than a Bibliography

6. Placement:

1. Bibliography: Placed on the last page of the document.
2. Work cited: is written at the end of the academic work on a separate page. The academic document may not end with a Work Cited page.

7. Style of writing followed:

1. Bibliography: The Bibliography is used in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian citation style.
2. Work Cited: papers written in MLA style of referencing only use Work Cited to list the references.

Bibliography vs. Works Cited- Differences in Tabular Form

The table below sums up the differences between the Bibliography and the works cited.

If this table does not clarify the differences between the Bibliography and the work cited, the following illustrations of reference entries will surely clear your doubts.

Specimen of Bibliography

Here are a few illustrations of Bibliography entries:

1. Center for Disease Control and Aversion (2014) Epi Info (Version 9) [Computer program]. Available at http://www.cdca.com/download.html (Accessed: 25 June 2015).
2. Jayson, B., (2017) Technique in tumor research. National Organization for Tumour Study, 
3. Pears, N.T. (1976) Objects for Nothing. New York: New York Sound Studios.
4. The University of Texas (20120) The University of Texas experience. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLxV3L62IaTA (Accessed: 11 June 2021).

Examples of Works Cited

Here are some examples of Work Cited entries:

1. Chatterjee, B. and Watson, D.F. (2021) Pickard’s guide to operative dentistry. 8th Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Howard, Z. (2004) The sunset. Available at http://www.amazon.co.us/kindlestore (Accessed: 19 July 2019).
3. Lawson, R. (2014) The marvels of the Cosmos. 4th Edited by Frederick Joules, James Smith, and Taylor Bradley. Brighton: Smiths.
4. ‘Dash (band)’ (2015) Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Dash_(band) (Accessed: 10 July 2017).

Conclusion

Hopefully, by now you have gained a clear idea of the difference between a Bibliography and a Works Cited. In case you still have some queries related to the Annotated Bibliography and work cited, or you fail to create the reference entries in any citation style, connect with us.