How to Write a Term Paper With a Bibliography and Footnotes

Making a Bibliography

1). List all your sources alphabetically by the author's surname, separated from the first name by a comma. If there is more than one author, the others will be named afterwards by first and last name.
2). Insert a period after the author's name or names and enter the work's title. If you are working in the Modern Language Association (MLA) format, the title should be underlined. If the source is a journal or magazine article, the article's title should be written inside quotation marks, followed by the publication's title, which will be underlined.
3). Write the place and year of publication after the title. This should not be underlined and should feature a colon after the city of publication. If more than one city is listed, use the first one. If your source is a journal article, include the volume and issue numbers after the journal title, the year in brackets followed by a colon, and the range of page numbers on which the article appears.

1). Insert a superscript numeral immediately following the fact or statement referenced. Since footnotes appear at the bottom of each page, start again at number one for each page of your term paper.
2). Indent footnote references by five spaces, or one press of the "tab" key. Use a smaller font to separate footnotes from the body of your paper. Most word processing programs can automatically format footnotes. In Pages for Mac computers, click "Insert" and select "Footnote" to automatically create a footnote section at the bottom of your page. In Microsoft Word, click "Insert," scroll to "Reference" and select "Footnote" to start your footnotes section.
3). Enter the bibliographical information into your footnotes section. If you are using the Chicago Manual of Style, for the first time you cite a reference in footnotes you need to use the full bibliographical information. For footnotes, write the author's first name first, then her surname. In each subsequent reference of the same source, you can shorten it to just the author's surname and the work's title, shortened to four or fewer words. You also need to include the exact page number of your citation in your footnote.