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Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism


To prepare for your next assignment in the course, let’s talk briefly about citing sources.  When you gather information from outside sources (websites, books, magazines, newspapers, etc.), and you use information from those sources in your own writing, you must give credit to the people who created those sources.

Even if you only use someone else’s IDEAS and not his or her exact words, you must still give that person credit for those ideas. 

Plagiarism occurs when someone shares words or ideas that belong to others without giving credit for them.  Plagiarism is considered a serious offense.  It can cause someone to lose credit on an assignment, be removed from a course (or even a college or university).  A person can lose his or her job or even be sued for plagiarism.  

There are several ways to avoid plagiarism.

Using Exact Words from a Source


First, when using the exact words from an outside source in your own writing, do the following:

  • Include quotation marks around those exact words.  Quotation marks tell the audience the words are not your own.

  • Name the author and the source of the information, either in the same sentence in which the quotation appears or in parentheses at the end of the quotation.  The act of giving credit to sources in this way is called citing a source.

  • Include the page number (or line numbers for poems) for printed sources on which the information appeared in the original source.

Here is an example of proper source citation for an exact quotation:

According to Jennifer Smith in her blog Running to Live, “Running is a way to clear your mind, clear your arteries, and blaze a path to happiness” (runningtolive.blogspot.com).

©iStock


©iStock

Using Ideas from a Source


If you are simply using ideas from another source, but not exact words, you still need to give credit to the source.

Here’s an example of proper source citation for an idea from an outside source.  (Note that quotation marks are not used, because the sentence only refers to the author’s ideas, not her exact words.)

Running has so many positive benefits on both the mind and the body.  When our minds are so full of worries and things to do that we can’t shut them off, Jennifer Smith argues in her blog Running to Live that the act of running can help (runningtolive.blogspot.com).