Create a Bibliography, References, or Work Cited

Word 365 2013 2010 2007 2003
If you use citations in your Word documents, you might need the bibliographic items for each source that you have referenced. Microsoft Word offers a useful tool to create a list of these bibliographic references, also named as bibliography, references or works cited, as a list of the citations added in the document.

Before you create the bibliography, make sure you have replaced all placeholders with a proper citation (for more details, see how to create a citation, how to create a multi-source citation). If you inserted a placeholder for a citation, the source would not appear in the bibliography. However, if you later replace the placeholder with source information, the bibliography will be automatically updated, and the new source will be added to the bibliography.

To create a bibliography, follow the next steps:

   1.   Place the cursor where you want to insert the bibliography.

   2.   On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click the Bibliography button and then do one of the following:

Citations and Bibliography in Word 2016
  • Choose one of the built-in styles in the drop-down menu.
  • Select Insert Bibliography at the bottom of the menu. You will need to add a heading, and you cannot automatically update the bibliography.
    Bibliography Word 2016

Word creates the Bibliography or the Works Cited based on the sources:

example of Bibliography in Word 2016

You can change style of your bibliography by doing the following:

  1. right-click on the bibliography,
  2. choose Styles in the popup menu:
    Bibliography popup in Word 2016
  3. choose style in the list or create your own style:
    styles of Bibliography in Word 2016

See also this tip in French: Comment créer une bibliographie.

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