81 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality 5.2.3 Reference Lists and Bibliographies: Niggling Details Compiling and recording sources in a reference list (or list of works cited in MLA style) or bibliography is more than simply attending to niggling details, of course – it’s a big job and constitutes a significant part of an academic or scientific paper – but the process can certainly give an author the impression of drowning in niggling details. As soon as the rules of any particular referencing style or set of guidelines begin to sink in, allowing the beleaguered compiler to surface for air, an exception pops up, and there are always exceptions – sources of a kind that just isn’t mentioned in the guidelines you’re using or unique sources that seem to belong in more than one of the reference categories you’re trying to follow or simply don’t fit any of the rules provided. So compiling a perfect list of sources, whether you call it References or Works Cited or Bibliography, can be a challenge as much of patience as precision, and as dull a task as many find it, a touch of imagination never hurts as you wrestle the many multimedia resources that tend to inform today’s academic and scientific articles into what remains a very traditional form of acknowledging and sharing scholarly sources. Being both accurate and thorough is as important today as it was 100 years ago – without all the correct information accurately recorded, you neither adequately nor respectfully acknowledge the work of other scholars, and you also make it difficult for your readers to find your sources. Today, the effect of a reference list, for good or ill, is immediate: your paper and sources appear online in many cases before they ever see print, and immediately enter a complex web of cross references on which scholars rely for a variety of reasons, from reviews of literature to assessments of journals. PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk