The bibliography is the description and knowledge of books. It is the science in charge of the reference study of texts. The bibliography includes, therefore, the catalog of the writings that belong to a certain subject.
A writer can refer to the bibliography to refer to a document that he used as a source in his writing task or to cite content that, although he did not use in his work, can complement and enrich his writings by expanding the information they present.
In the first case, we can speak of enumerative or textual bibliography. This bibliography assumes a system of signs in relation to the texts. Instead, the analytical, sociological, or historical literature emphasizes the interpretation of concepts.
According to DigoPaul, the bibliography can offer an overview of all the publications on a certain topic or belonging to the same category. There is, therefore, the bibliography that brings together all the works published by the same author, the bibliography that includes the publications published in a country or the bibliography that focuses on a time period, for example.
Writers, especially those who are dedicated to scientific topics or belonging to the field of non-fiction, must handle the criteria of bibliographic references to cite the sources they use in their works. In general, these references appear at the foot of the page or at the end of the book and allow the reader to access the original source cited by the author and contrast the data.
How to write a bibliography?
Although there is no single way to cite a bibliography, to avoid multiple nomenclatures in the presentation of this type of data, a series of norms have been created that can help to clearly elaborate them.
The documents that are cited in a bibliography are those that could be used to extract relevant information in the publication that is being presented and their purpose is to facilitate the access of readers to the originals from which this information comes.
When citing a certain work, the title of the work and the author will be written (in the event that it is a text that has been prepared by numerous authors, each one of them will be separated by semicolons from each other. No You should write things like “various authors”, “anonymous”, “etc.”), as well as the edition and the year in which it was first published.
In this way, the most correct way in which a bibliography can be captured is: Author. Title of the work. Number of the edition used, unless it is the first. Place in which it was published and Editorial. ISBN of the book. Example: Jiménez Montoya, Pedro; García Meseguer, Álvaro; Morán Cabré, Francisco. Reinforced concrete. 14th ed. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2000.
If you want to cite a particular chapter, an outline that is headed with the author of the chapter, followed by the title, number of the edition, publisher and number of the pages covered by said reference will be convenient. Example: Nash, Mark. «The art of movement». In: Fields of force: an essay on the kinetic. Barcelona: MACBA, 2000, p. 313-316.
Finally, if you want to refer to a work that belongs to an article published in a magazine, write the author of the article, the title, the name of the magazine, the volume and number (year in which it was published) and the pages encompassing. Example: Gerngross, Tillman U.; Slater, Steven C. “Plant-Based Plastics.” Research and science, nº 289 (2000), p. 4-9.
