How to Format a Literature Review | APA | MLA

What Is a Lit Review?

A literature review is not a simple summary of what has been written around a specific topic. It is a synthesis of that information to review the different theories and ideas that have been discussed and written about. It may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas or even trace their historical development over time. Knowing how to format a literature review correctly will ensure that your paper will be laid out correctly when you submit it.

Academic writing at this level is usually done to a very specific academic style such as literature review APA format or MLA. Your literature review must follow this style precisely especially when it comes to your citations and references which are a vital part of your literature review. Good academic writing and formatting is vital if your work is to be accepted.

Getting your literary review format spot on is very important but often students have limited experience in using the style that is required of them. It is therefore very important that you get all of the help that you can find to ensure that you apply the different types of formatting required correctly within your paper.

What to Do Before Starting to Write Your Literature Review

Before you start to worry about how to format a literature review or search for nursing literature review topics (if this is a related theme of your lit review) you need to ensure that you have your work on track. The following should always be followed:

1. Clarify your requirements: most of the time you will be provided with very clear requirements for your assignments and paper. However, with a literature review it may be left quite open as to what topic is to be written about. Ensure that you clarify exactly what your tutor is looking for before you get to work so that you don’t waste any time.
2. Look at models to understand how others have approached the task: read past literature reviews of information around your topic area to understand how others have approached the task. This will help to guide your writing as well as often pointing you in the direction of a number of relevant sources for your own writing.
3. Narrow down your topic: often a student will select a topic area that is simply too broad such as “global warming”. This will fail to focus your research and there will be many thousands of sources of information to look at. You need to provide your research with more focus to narrow down your topic area. For instance “The impact on global warming on the decline of coral reefs around northern Australia.”
4. Select relevant sources: look at how current your sources are. Even something a few years old may be considered out of date in some fields such as medicine, while you may need to look at the historical development of an idea within sociology. Ensure that sources are going to be relevant to the research that you are conducting.

How to Format a Literature Review Correctly

Whether writing in APA, MLA or any other format you must ensure that your formatting is done perfectly. There are some very specific differences between the different types of formatting and you must get it right. The following sections will run through some of those differences:

Writing a Literature Review APA Style

APA or the American Psychological Association style of writing is most commonly used within the social sciences such as sociology and psychology. Your citation within your text when you refer to the work of an author will be in the format (Smith, A) using the surname and first initial. If you use the name of the author within the sentence then you will also provide the date of the publication (“Smith (2011) says…”)

All of the sources that you cite within your literature review must then be listed within your “references” page. Each reference must be carefully organized and structured according to the rules of APA:

A reference to a book within APA should look like:

Last, F. M. (Year Published) Book. City, State: Publisher.

A reference to a journal in APA will look like: 

Last, F. M., & Last, F. M. (Year Published). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. Pages.

Remember when learning how to do a literature review APA that the origin of your source will affect the layout of the reference within your references section.

How to Do an MLA Format Literature Review

MLA is the style of the Modern Languages Association and is often used within the humanities such as art, or English language. Within your literature review you will provide the citation using the last name and first name (Smith, Albert). Where you use the name within the text you will follow it with the page number (“According to Albert Smith (27)…”)

Each citation that you make within your literature review must be recorded within the “Works cited” page in the correct format:

A reference to a book in MLA format will look like:

Last, First M. Book. City: Publisher, Year Published. Print.

A reference to a journal article using MLA:

Last, First M., and First M. Last. "Article Title." Journal Title Series Volume. Issue (Year Published): Page(s). Print.

When writing your MLA literature review and doing your works cited page always take care with getting the structure of your reference correct depending on where you found the source.

Template for You Literature Review

As with other papers for student writing you will need to write your literature review to a specific structure. While this can vary somewhat between subject areas it will typically follow the outline shown here:

1. Introduction: this is your opportunity to clearly state the topic area that you are investigating and to detail the scope of the review that you are undertaking. In addition to stating what you will be reviewing it may also be necessary to clearly state any exclusions should they not be immediately obvious.
2. Main body: this can be organized in many different ways depending on the type of review you have undertaken and the subject area. The most common structures and thematic and chronological. A thematic literature review will review different themes within each section of the main body while chronological review will follow the historical timeline. Each, however, should not simply summarize the information but evaluate it and compare it.
3. Conclusion: this section will provide a brief summary of the main findings as well as highlighting any differences in opinion, weaknesses and holes within the current literature. If it is a part of a larger paper it is also the point at which you will justify the research that you have proposed.

If you are not sure how to format a literature review or how to do you research just turn to the professional team for effective and reliable help and advice.