CITING SOURCES AND AVOIDING PLAGIARISM



What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the willful or inadvertent copying of words or ideas from a source without giving the author full credit for those words or ideas.  The source may be a magazine article, a television program, a professor's lecture, a friend's paper, or a book.


How serious is plagiarism?

While you are unlikely to be hauled before an Ottawa County judge for this crime, think of plagiarism as theft--if you plagiarize, you are stealing someone else's ideas and claiming credit for them yourself.  Plagiarism can mean an F in a course or even expulsion from the University (see the GVSU Catalog).
 

What information should be documented?

Quotation--repeating the source, or parts of it, word for word (quotations should be clearly marked by "  "'s at the beginning and end, unless the quotation is 4 or more lines long; in that case, you should set the quotation
apart from the text as an indented block).

Paraphrase--stating someone else's idea in your own words (Yes, all ideas must be properly documented, even if they are in your own words!).

How do I know when to quote, when to paraphrase and when to use my own ideas?

Many beginning writers think that a slew of quotations strung together equals a research paper (what it equals is disaster--a paper that is not truly your own, that doesn't give you the opportunity to think for yourself, and that doesn't earn a grade you would be pleased to have). 

To avoid falling into this trap, you need to focus on your own ideas; develop them using your research material to support, or to amplify, or to highlight.  Think in terms of thesis and supporting evidence.  Also, think about bouncing your own ideas off of your research material:  ask yourself what ideas you disagree with, as well as where you agree. Try to be analytical about what you read, and remember that the more you read, the more of an expert you become on the topic, and the better able you are to reach your own judgments about what you read.  Remember too that life is much more gray than black and white.  Issues are complex; you are likely to accept some ideas and reject others (even ideas from the same author or argument).

How do I know what ideas came from where and which are my own?  

Imagine that over the last couple of weeks you have been working diligently on a research paper--reading here and there in books and journals, relying on your memory to tell you what appeared where and whether or not that brilliant conclusion came to you in a flash of inspiration or from your reading.  If this is your system, you are sunk!  It is virtually impossible to properly document your sources unless you write everything down.  If you take notes from your reading, make sure all notes have author and page number for each idea or quotation (so that you don't have to dig for this information later, keep a library log listing
the full citations for any item you looked at).  If you photocopy your sources, write the full citation at the top of the first sheet, and make sure each page has a clear page number.

NEVER write your paper first and add sources later.    Include at least the author and page number in your first draft. Being organized from the start saves much anguish in the end (and also saves you from frantic midnight runs to Zumberge or the temptation to "fudge" citation information when you discover the library is closed or your source is missing from the stacks!).

How do I document sources?

Every discipline has its own preferred way of documenting sources, but regardless of discipline, there are three basic options:          

1.    Footnotes--a quotation or paraphrase marked at the end by a superscript number corresponds to the same number and a line of information at the bottom of the page.

2.    End Notes--a quotation or paraphrase marked at the end by a superscript number corresponds to the same number in a list of numbered notes at the end of the paper.

3. Parenthetical Citation--parentheses after the quotation or paraphrase contain the author's last name and the number of the page on which the material appears OR a number and page number.  The author's last name or the number correspond to a list of full citations at the end of your paper.  This alphabetized list is entitled "Works Cited" or "Sources Cited." It is not just an attached bibliography.  A bibliography doesn't correspond to the ideas cited in the text and a bibliography might include more works than those actually used in the paper.


Information to be included in any citation:

1. the author's or editor's name

2. the title of the work (underlined if a book or journal, in quotation marks if a short story or article)

3. if a book, the place of publication, the publisher's name, the year of publication

4. if a journal or magazine, the volume #, issue number, and date the page or pages on which information is located

Some examples follow for endnotes or footnotes.  The numbers correspond to superscript numbers at the end of paragraphs (usually) of borrowed material (paraphrased or quoted):


        An article in a scholarly journal

       1Elmer Fudd, "How to Hunt Wabbits," Wabbit Journal 38 (1991), 23.



        An Article in a magazine


        2Rachel Carson, "A World Without Rabbits," Newsweek, March 8, 1990, p. 76.


        A Book


        3Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck, Enjoying Nature (Orlando:  U of Florida Press, 1990), 26-29.



        An Edited Book


        4Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck, eds. Enjoying Nature (Orlando: U
of Florida Press, 1990), 26-29.


        An Essay in an Edited Book

        5Woody Woodpecker, "The Joys of Wood," in Enjoying Nature, ed. Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck (Orlando:  U of Florida, 1990), 65.


        Oddities:



        6An interview with Bugs Bunny, Rabbit Canyon, March 8, 1993.


        7Information from a lecture by Professor Smoke E. Bear, Grand Valley State University, April 1, 1992.

For the MLA Citation Style, including information about citing electronic sources, visit this link.

        

For parenthetical citation, in the place of the superscript you would have parentheses with author and page number or number and page number.  (1:26) for example might correspond to an entry like this on the "Works Cited" page at the end:  


        1. Fudd, Elmer and Daffy Duck, eds. Enjoying Nature.  Orlando:  University of Florida Press, 1990.


Please note that the page number is already in the essay (26).  The entries are usually listed alphabetically and in a bibliographic, rather than footnote, format.  In place of the number 1 in the parentheses you could just have the author or editor's last name (instead of numbering the entries).  Some people object to parenthetical citation, saying that it interferes more with the flow of a paper.  Others prefer it.



REMEMBER: Take the time and do the work to give credit where it                 is due by citing sources properly!