Citing & plagiarism
Key concept about citation
You should cite resources that contribute to your work, both direct quotes and concepts and information you have summarized or used in another way. General knowledge or ideas that appear in all resources you consulted do not need to be cited. For example, Martin Luther King’s birth and death dates do not need a citation, but if you use his ideas about agape to form your own discussion, you need to cite King or the resource where you found his ideas.
Top-notch online sources for citation help
A Pocket Style Manual (Diana Hacker)–APA, MLA, CSE, and Chicago examples and details; easy-to-use, this is the handbook used at VU.
The St. Martin’s Handbook (Andrea Lundsford)–An easy-to-use reference for APA, MLA, Chicago, and CBE styles.
APA Online–excellent FAQs and details from the American Psychological Association itself; find answers to tricky citation situations.
Writing Center at University of Wisconsin at Madison–APA, MLA, CSE, APSA, Chicago, numbered sources; this is a champion resource with many examples.
Choosing a citation style
In addition to asking your prof which citation style is best for the assignment, you should ask for further detail, especially for graduate level papers. Does the prof expect footnotes or in-text citations? Today, MLA uses in-text citations, not footnotes. If the assignment designates MLA with footnotes, you should ask for more clarification; perhaps Chicago style would be a better choice.
MLA–(Modern Language Association)–the simplest style; used in the humanities where the date of publication may not be significant; citation with author and page appears within the text. If in doubt at Valpo, choose MLA.
APA–(American Psychological Association)–features dates prominently within the text because when a study was done is important; often required in these fields at Valpo: nursing, psychology, education, business, social work, or sociology. Names of the authors are often included within the text of a sentence: “Johnson and Lin (2001) examined whether passersby could differentiate between tap water and bottled water.”
Chicago–(Chicago Manual of Style CM)–uses footnotes collected at the end or the bottom of the page; Word provides a feature for insertion/deletion but not formatting. At Valpo history, theology, or business classes may suggest this style, especially where there are many citations. This style allows you to easily add information footnotes, as well as resource footnotes. Place a note number at the end of the citation, after the last punctuation. Number citations consecutively.
CSE–(Council of Science Editors)–includes two citation methods: can include the authors’ names and publication dates in parenthetical citations in the text like APA, or can use superscript numbers matching numbered items in the bibliography. At Valpo some classes in the sciences favor CSE; ask your prof which method to use within CSE.
Other ways to get help with citation and bibliography
The Christopher Center has manuals and handbooks available. A writing consultant will be your partner in working out citation questions. A face-t0-face appointment is best. However, you can email or IM us for a specific problem; we’ll try to find a solution. We have the complete APA manual on hand, and we can find the other complete manuals in the library collection.
Plagiarism
You have a variety of reasons for avoiding plagiarism in college–losing credit for a course or paper if you are called before the Honor Council at Valpo, feeling sheepish if make this mistake inadvertently, and the sense of fairness you have toward other people’s creative efforts. (In terms of media, you want to avoid costs involved with copyright violation whether real or alleged!)
Many student violations occur inadvertently–you find an interesting idea online, copy a portion of it into your paper and neglect to summarize it or integrate the ideas into your own words. Then you may forget to cite the source or use direct quotes. Even though you didn’t mean to plagiarize, you have. So be careful in your research–don’t use copy and paste in drafts.
The Writing Center will gladly help you determine if you have included enough citations and help you avoid plagiarism. In fact, this is a very typical request!
Other resources about plagiarism
The plagiarism-core-statement.pdf statement and explanation of how to use sources and citations.
A self-correcting test: Can you Recognize Plagiarism?
An excellent article with suggestions for faculty: Lipson, A.L., & Reindl, S.M. (2003) The responsible plagiarist: Understanding students who misuse resources. About Campus, 8(3), 7-14.
Definitions and examples, plus distributable handouts: www.plagiarism.org
Guidelines for how to paraphrase properly from plagiarism.org
Examples of noted plagiarism cases: Wikipedia
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