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What is this annotated bibliography template?

This is a free LaTeX template for an annotated bibliography in APA 7 format, with a one-line switch to MLA 9. It gives you letter paper with one-inch margins, 12-point Times-style text, double spacing, left-aligned text with hyphenation off, the page number in the top right corner, the heading "Annotated Bibliography" centred and bold, every reference flush left with a half-inch hanging indent, and every annotation as a separate paragraph indented half an inch from the left margin, which is exactly what section 9.51 of the Publication Manual asks for. Three fictional sample sources (a journal article with a DOI, a book and a web page) come with finished 120-word annotations you can study and replace.

The document class is plain article, and the layout comes from four standard packages: geometry, newtxtext, setspace and fancyhdr. Two tiny commands defined in the preamble, \entry{...} for the citation and \annotation{...} for the paragraph under it, do all the indenting. Nothing needs installing; the file compiles with pdfLaTeX on any TeX distribution and in Overleaf.

Annotated bibliography example

Here is the first source from the template as it appears on the page. The citation is an APA 7 journal article with two authors and a DOI; the annotation underneath it runs to 126 words and moves through summary, evaluation and relevance in that order.

Notice the three moves. Sentences one and two summarise what the authors did and found. Sentence three evaluates: it names a strength (sample size, objective measures) and a weakness (one campus, no control for caffeine). The last sentence states the relevance: which claim in the paper this source supports and where it will be used. The same shape works for every source type. In LaTeX the example is simply:

\entry{Halvorsen, I., \& Reyes, T. (2023). Sleep timing and working memory in first-year undergraduates. \textit{Journal of Student Learning Research, 14}(2), 115--132. \url{https://doi.org/10.0000/jslr.2023.0142}}
\annotation{Halvorsen and Reyes report a semester-long study of 212 first-year undergraduates ...}

What an annotation must contain: summary, evaluation, relevance

An annotation is not an abstract copied from the journal and not a book review. Most rubrics score the same three parts, so write one or two sentences on each and keep the whole paragraph between 100 and 150 words unless the assignment says otherwise.

1. Summary. What is the source about and what does it argue or find? For an empirical study, name the method, the sample and the main result. For a book or essay, state the thesis and the scope. Use your own words; do not quote.
2. Evaluation. How reliable and useful is it? Comment on the author's credentials, the evidence and method, the date, any bias or limitation, and how it compares with other sources in the list. Be specific: "the sample is drawn from one campus" beats "the study has limitations".
3. Relevance. How will you use it? Say which part of your argument it supports, what background or counter-argument it provides, or why it shaped your research question. If the assignment is a standalone exercise, say how it fits the topic.

Some instructors ask for a purely descriptive (summary-only) or a purely evaluative annotation, or for the three parts as separate paragraphs. The \annotation command accepts several paragraphs; separate them with a blank line and APA will want the second and later paragraphs to carry an extra first-line indent, which you can add with \hspace*{0.5in}.

APA annotated bibliography format (APA 7)

Use this checklist against your own page. Everything in the left column is set up in the template; the right column shows which line does it.

The three APA reference patterns in the template

• Journal article: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, volume(issue), first–last page. https://doi.org/xxx — the journal name and volume number are italic together, the issue number is not.
• Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book: Subtitle in sentence case. Publisher. — no place of publication in APA 7, and the publisher's name is given in full.
• Web page: Group Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL — omit the site name when it is the same as the author, as in the Sleep Research Collective entry; add "Retrieved Month Day, Year, from" before the URL only if the page is designed to change.

MLA annotated bibliography format (MLA 9)

To switch the whole document to MLA 9, change one line in the preamble and set your surname:

\newif\ifmla
\mlatrue                    % was \mlafalse
\newcommand{\lastname}{Smith}
\newcommand{\mlaheading}{%
  Jordan \lastname\\
  Professor Lee\\
  ENG 101\\
  19 October 2026\par}

Every \ifmla ... \else ... \fi block in the file then takes its first branch: the running header becomes "Smith 1", the four-line MLA heading (name, instructor, course, date) is printed flush left at the top of the first page, the title becomes plain centred text (MLA does not bold section headings), and the three references print in MLA form while the annotations stay as they are. Note the web page: because the Sleep Research Collective is both author and publisher, the MLA entry starts with the page title and gives the site as the container, whereas APA keeps the organisation as author and drops the site name. The MLA Handbook calls the list an "Annotated Bibliography" or "Annotated List of Works Cited"; edit the heading string if your instructor prefers the second. Everything else, including the double spacing, hanging indent and indented annotation, is the same in both styles, so the switch only touches what differs.

Write each MLA entry with the same \entry command; the template shows the MLA versions of all three sample sources in the \ifmla branches. For the full set of MLA core elements and more entry formats, see the MLA Works Cited Page template.

Section-by-section walkthrough

Preamble: page, font, spacing and header

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in,headheight=15pt,headsep=21pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{newtxtext}      % Times-like 12 pt text font
\usepackage{setspace}       % double spacing
\usepackage{fancyhdr}       % page number in the header
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}   % also loads url
\urlstyle{same}

\newif\ifmla
\mlafalse                   % APA 7 (default); \mlatrue for MLA 9
\newcommand{\lastname}{Smith}

\doublespacing
\raggedright
\hyphenpenalty=10000
\frenchspacing
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\ifmla \fancyhead[R]{\lastname\ \thepage} \else \fancyhead[R]{\thepage} \fi
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}

headheight plus headsep add up to half an inch, which puts the page number where both style guides want it. \raggedright and \hyphenpenalty=10000 give the left-aligned, unhyphenated text APA 7 (section 2.23) and MLA 9 both require. \frenchspacing gives one space after a period, and \urlstyle{same} keeps DOIs and URLs in the body font. The url package lets a long DOI break after a slash or period rather than poke into the margin.

The \entry and \annotation commands

\newcommand{\entry}[1]{%
  \par\noindent\hangindent=0.5in\hangafter=1 #1\par}

\newcommand{\annotation}[1]{%
  \par{\leftskip=0.5in\noindent #1\par}}

Each reference is one paragraph with \hangindent=0.5in and \hangafter=1, so line one sits flush left and every later line is indented half an inch. The annotation is a paragraph whose \leftskip is half an inch, so every line of it, including the first, starts half an inch in. Because the assignment is made inside a group and ended with \par before the closing brace, it applies to that paragraph only, and the next \entry returns to the margin. No hanging or changepage package is needed.

The body

The body is the centred heading followed by three source blocks, each an \ifmla pair of references (MLA first, APA second) and one \annotation. Sources are in alphabetical order: Halvorsen, Okafor, Sleep Research Collective. To add a fourth source, copy a block, replace the two references and the annotation, and put it in the right alphabetical position; if you only ever use one style you can delete the other branch and the \ifmla / \else / \fi lines.

How to customize the template

• Change the heading. Edit the string in the two \centering lines. APA assignments sometimes want the paper title instead of "Annotated Bibliography"; MLA may want "Annotated List of Works Cited".
• Add an APA title page. Put the body of this file after the \maketitle of the APA Title Page template (which uses the apa7 class) and move the \entry and \annotation definitions into its preamble; the class already sets the margins, spacing and page number.
• Edit the MLA first-page heading. The four flush-left lines that MLA puts before the title (your name, the instructor's name, the course, and the date as day Month year) live in \mlaheading in the preamble and are printed only when \mlatrue is set. Replace the sample values.
• Longer annotations. The command takes any amount of text. For separate summary, evaluation and relevance paragraphs, leave a blank line between them inside the braces and start the second and third with \hspace*{0.5in} for the APA first-line indent.
• Generate it from a .bib file. For a long list, keep the sources and annotations in BibTeX with an annotation field and let biblatex (style apa or mla) build the page; the four lines are in the comment block at the top of the template. Compile with latexmk so biber runs.
• Font and paper. newtxtext is the maintained Times clone; mathptmx or times give the same look on an older distribution. Outside North America replace letterpaper with a4paper in the class options and in geometry.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

• Annotation that only summarises. The commonest reason for a low mark. Every annotation needs at least one sentence of evaluation and one of relevance; use the three-part structure above as a checklist.
• Annotation flush with the margin. If you type the paragraph without \annotation{...} it starts at the left margin and looks like a second reference. Wrap it in the command.
• Entries not alphabetised. LaTeX prints blocks in the order you write them. Sort by the first author's surname; for a source with no author, by the first significant word of the title.
• Title case in an APA reference. APA 7 uses sentence case for article and book titles (capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns); journal names stay in title case. MLA uses title case throughout.
• Ampersand errors. In the APA author list type \&, not a bare &, which LaTeX reads as a table column separator and stops with "Misplaced alignment tab".
• Extra space between sources. A blank line between blocks is harmless, but \vspace or \bigskip breaks the uniform double spacing both styles require. Remove them.
• Heading made with \section*. That prints it larger and left-aligned. Both styles want the heading in the same size as the body, centred; the template uses \centering inside a group so no extra vertical space is added.
• "Undefined control sequence \entry". You pasted the body into another document without the two \newcommand lines. Copy them into that preamble too.

How to compile the annotated bibliography

1. In Octree: click Open as template above. The document opens with a live preview; replace the sample sources, or paste a citation and ask the AI assistant to format it in APA 7 or MLA 9 and draft the annotation from your notes.
2. In Overleaf: create a blank project, paste the source into main.tex and recompile with the default pdfLaTeX compiler. Every package used is in a standard TeX Live install.
3. Locally: save as annotated-bibliography.tex and run:

   pdflatex annotated-bibliography.tex
   # or, with biblatex and a .bib file:
   latexmk -pdf annotated-bibliography.tex

   One pdfLaTeX pass is enough for the manual version.

Related templates

Frequently asked questions

What is an annotated bibliography?

It is a list of sources (books, articles, web pages) formatted as a reference list, in which each citation is followed by a short paragraph, the annotation, that summarises the source, evaluates its quality and explains how it relates to your research. Instructors assign one so you read your sources closely before you write the paper. It is usually a standalone assignment, though it can also be attached to a paper or proposal.

How long should each annotation be?

Most assignments ask for 100 to 150 words per source, which is one solid paragraph covering the summary, the evaluation and the relevance. Some instructors ask for 200 to 300 words or for separate paragraphs for each part. Check the brief; if it does not say, the three sample annotations in this template (121 to 126 words each) are a safe length.

What is the difference between an APA and an MLA annotated bibliography?

The layout is nearly identical: double spacing, a hanging indent on the citation and an annotation indented half an inch. The citations differ. APA 7 uses initials, the year in parentheses after the author, sentence-case titles and a page number in the header; MLA 9 uses full names, title case with quotation marks for articles, the date after the publisher and a running header with your last name. The heading is bold in APA and plain in MLA. This template switches between the two with one line.

How do I make a hanging indent and an indented annotation in LaTeX?

The citation uses \hangindent=0.5in with \hangafter=1, which indents every line after the first. The annotation sets \leftskip=0.5in inside a group, which moves the whole paragraph in by half an inch. Both are plain TeX primitives, so no extra package is needed and the trick works in any document class. The template wraps them in \entry{...} and \annotation{...} so you never touch the primitives.

Can I generate an annotated bibliography from a .bib file?

Yes. biblatex reads an annotation field from each BibTeX entry. Load \usepackage[style=apa,backend=biber]{biblatex} (or style=mla), add an annotation = {...} field to every entry in refs.bib, redefine the annotation field format to print as an indented paragraph, and finish with \printbibliography[title={Annotated Bibliography}]. The comment block at the top of the template shows the four lines needed. For a short assignment the manual \entry / \annotation pair is quicker and easier to proofread.

Does an annotated bibliography need a title page?

In APA 7 a student assignment normally has a title page with the title, your name, course, instructor and due date, followed by the annotated bibliography on the next page. The APA title page is not included here so the template stays standalone; append the body to the APA Title Page template if your course wants one. In MLA 9 there is no title page; your name, instructor, course and date go in the top left corner of the first page, and the template prints that four-line heading as soon as you switch to MLA (edit the lines in \mlaheading).