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Plagiarism & Citation

This guide will help you identify and avoid plagiarism, as well as accurately cite materials.

Quotation

  • Using a small portion of a work exactly as it appears in the original

  • The original author or source should always be cited
  • When to Quote

  • When another writer's language is especially memorable or uniquely expressive 

  • When another writer's language is so clear and economical that making the same point in your own words would be ineffective.

  • When you want the solid reputation of a source to lend authority to your own writing.

  • Paraphrasing

  • Putting a passage in your own words
  • It does not mean changing a few words or even sentence structure, it is to show that you understand a passage on your own terms.
  • May take from a longer section than a quote and condense it slightly
  • Author/source should still be credited
  • Summarizing

  • Using your own words to describe the main idea(s) of a passage
  • Summaries are usually shorter and cover ideas more broadly than the original passage or a paraphrase
  • As with quotes and paraphrasing, the source of the passage summarized is to be cited