Plagiarism and Citation Methods

What is Plagiarism?

Occurs when someone deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source

The Importance of Intent

There’s a difference between intentionally presenting someone’s work as your own and misusing your sources

Some Examples of Deliberate Use

Using papers from a paper mill Presenting someone else’s paper as your

own Copying large sections of text from a source

without attribution These are considered serious academic

offenses

Misuse of Sources Academic conventions dictate certain

methods for citing sources These conventions must be learned and

mistakes will happen Careless or mistaken use of citation

conventions is not plagiarism As long as some effort is made to indentify

source material, it will be treated as a stylistic issue

What is Common Knowledge?

Anything your reader could commonly know or that is available in general sources

This sort of knowledge will vary from discipline to discipline

Generally, any sort of knowledge you see commonly repeated in the research you are reading is considered common knowledge

What Isn’t Common Knowledge?

Highly specific statistics Not all specifics are highly specific. Some are

common knowledge e.g. the population of the US

Controversial information or ideas that contradict prevailing opinions

Ideas that appear in only a few of your sources or that are specific to one source

Examples of Common Knowledge

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President

On Sep. 11th, Al-Qaeda attacked the United States

On average, Mars is 78 million km from the Earth

Not Common Knowledge

Some scholars believe Abraham Lincoln suffered from manic-depression

Currently, Al-Qaeda’s operational capacity has been reduced to the point where it is more a brand name than a centralized organization

Steven Hawking believes that colonizing Mars and other planets is the only way to preserve the human race

Other Points Where Problems Could Arise

Failing to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks

Also, if you quote someone, you must cite them and provide a reference

Summary vs. Paraphrase

A paraphrase reports information from a source in the same number of words

A summary reports information from you source in a condensed form

Possible Issues When summarizing or paraphrasing, you

must restate the author’s ideas in your own language

If you half-copy the author’s sentences, you have misused your source

This could happen if you mix the author’s phrases with your own or if you plug synonyms into the author’s sentence structure

Example from Hacker Original text

In an effort to seek the causes of this disturbing trend, experts have pointed to the rise in childhood obesity that are unrelated to media.

-Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, “The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity.” 2004. Print.

Problem: Borrows Too Many Phrases

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation believes, experts have indicated a range of significant potential contributors to the rise in childhood obesity that are not linked to media (1).

Problem: Same Structure

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation believes, experts have identified (pointed to) a variety (range) of significant (important) factors causing (potential contributors to) a rise in childhood obesity that are not linked (unrelated) to media (1).

Solution to This Problem

Since it is easier to copy the source when it is in front of you, set the source aside and write a paraphrase or summary from memory

When you have finished your paraphrase or summary, check your source for accuracy and to make sure it isn’t too close to the original

Finally, if you are having a hard time, feel free to quote the source directly

Acceptable Paraphrase

A report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation claims sources other than the media were responsible for the childhood obesity crisis.

If You Are In Doubt

Consult your Hacker Style Manual

Send me an email or ask me in class

Purpose

To aid you in dealing with the arguments of others

Provide concrete examples to back up your argument

To keep your argument focused and on task

Citation methods

For this paper you will most likely use two types of in-text citations:

Short quotes Long quotes

Some General Guidelines

MLA requires that all signal phrases introducing a citation be in the present tense Ken Byron contends… The unnamed narrator in “Adams” believes…

Follow the author/date format

The author’s name and the page number of the quotation should appear in any in-text citation.

Two main ways of doing this George Saunders emphasizes America’s

subservience to advertising in “In Persuasion Nation” when a grandfather chops his grandson into pieces at the behest of a bag of Doritos and screams at the mutilated body “do you still believe that Doritos is merely a bag of corn chips with a ton of salt and about nine coloring agents” (161)?

Author Name and Page #

The grandfather turns to his grandson’s mutilated body and yells “Do you still believe that Doritos is merely a bag of corn chips, with a ton of salt and nine coloring agents” (Saunders 161)?

Basic Formatting The titles of longer works (movies, books,

edited collections, albums, etc.) should be italicized, e.g. Huckleberry Finn, Inception, Kind of Blue.

The titles of shorter works (short stories, essays, song titles, poems, etc.) should be in quotation marks, e.g. “Barn Burning”, “Shootings”, “I Sing The Body Electric”, “Stairway to Heaven”.

Short Quotations

Things you need to include: Author Page number Signal phrase

Examples George Saunders emphasizes America’s

subservience to advertising in “In Persuasion Nation” when a grandfather chops his grandson into pieces at the behest of a bag of Doritos and screams at the mutilated body “do you still believe that Doritos is merely a bag of corn chips with a ton of salt and about nine coloring agents” (161)?

The grandfather turns to his grandson’s mutilated body and yells “Do you still believe that Doritos is merely a bag of corn chips, with a ton of salt and nine coloring agents” (Saunders 161)?

Long Quotes Use when your quote is longer than 40

words Omit quotation marks Start on a new line indented five spaces

from the left margin Type the entire quotation from the new

margin and indent the first line of any subsequent paragraph

Maintain double-spacing throughout

Example Ken Byron develops an extensive scale for judging the

gender of every person in America:Here’s how it works: Say we determine that a man is an 8 on the manly scale, with 10 being most manly of all and 0 basically a neuter. And say we determine that his fiancee is a -6 on the manly scale, with -10 being most Fem of all. Calculating the difference between the man’s rating and the woman’s rating– the Gender Differential– we see that this proposed union is not, in fact, a Samish-Sex Marriage (Saunders 67-68).

Reference page Some resources:

Son Of Citation Machine Easy Bib Amacite

These will automatically generate a references page for

you. Just make sure to plug in your sources correctly.