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ENGL 003 - Reading III (virtual) - Thayer

This guide provides library information and resources for Professor Thayer's ENGL 003 VIRTUAL classes.

Why do I need to cite?

You've likely heard the term plagiarism (I'm sure it's on your syllabus), and know that citing has something to do with avoiding plagiarism. You have to let your audience know if what you are sharing is your idea or the idea of someone else. You do this through:

  • Identifying what ideas belong to others.
  • Ensuring that the idea is identified within the work as belonging to someone else. 
  • Letting others know all the information they need to find that idea for themselves. 

This process of giving credit to the source is called "citing", and APA calls those citations "References". There are reasons other than just "not plagiarizing" that citing your work is a good and necessary thing to do. 

  • Finding the source of information at a later (sometimes much later) date. 
  • Lending credibility to your argument by using the opinions of experts.
  • Including data others have collected through an unbiased process as evidence.
  • Show that you have done quality research of your own.
  • Allow others to find the same sources in order to come to their own conclusions. 
  • Professional researchers often use the number of times they have been cited in other journals to show that their work is important.  

Types of Plagiarism

Direct

A word-for-word copy of someone else's work, without attribution and quotation marks, is deliberate plagiarism. 

Self-Plagiarism

If you have already submitted something you've written for an assignment for any other class, using that same text without instructor permission and proper citations is plagiarism.

Patchwork

Taking bits and pieces from a variety of sources, putting them together, and presenting them as your original work is plagiarism. You need to cite your sources.

Accidental

Sometimes you forget. Sometimes you don't realize you paraphrased. Accidents happen, but it's still plagiarism. Keep careful track of your sources!

The Two Steps of Citing Sources

Documenting your sources is a TWO STEP process:

  1. List citations (e.g. author, title(s), publisher, date, pages) for all the works you used in alphabetical order on a separate page at the end of your paper. This list is called a works cited page, bibliography, source list, or references. How you list your citations depends on which style you use. It is important to be consistent in identifying your sources so that another reader can locate the same material.
  2. Identify (briefly in parenthesis) in the paper's text the works you have used.  These are called parenthetical or in-text citations.

BOTH steps must be included to cite properly! View the presentation and videos below to understand more about citing sources. Questions? Ask a librarian!

MLA Video Tutorials