Skip to Main Content

ENGL U101 - Composition Asynchronous: Plagiarism & Citations

Citations allow anyone who reads your work to find the items you used in your research. The key to a successful citation is to provide all the information needed for your reader to find the book, article, or another item you are citing. Citing builds your credibility and shows that your ideas are shared by other experts in the field. Citing scholarly, peer-reviewed sources lends extra credibility to your work. Citations avoid plagiarism! Citing your sources properly gives credit to the original author.

Plagiarism

The word plagiarize comes from a Latin word that means “kidnapper.” When you plagiarize, you’re kidnapping someone else’s words or ideas and pretending they’re your own. Even if you don’t mean to cheat, not giving credit still counts as plagiarism.

Many ways to Plagiarize

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

  • Turning in someone’s work as your own.
  • Failing to put a quotation in quotation marks.
  • Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit.
  • Giving incorrect information about the source of the quotation.
  • Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit.
  • Using a previous assignment or essay as a new assignment.

Plagiarism: Don't Do It

Citation Styles

What is a citation?

A citation is a reference to a source used in your research. It is how you give credit to the author for their creative and intellectual works that you referenced as support for your research.  Generally, citations should include author’s name, date, publisher information, journal information and/or DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

What are citation styles?

Citation styles are the formal way that citation information is formatted. It dictates what information is included, how it is ordered as well as punctuation and other formatting. There are many different styles and each mandate order of appearance of information (such as publication date, title, and page numbers following the author name etc), conventions of punctuation, use of italics (and underlining for emphasis) that are particular to their style.

How do I choose a citation style?

There are many different ways of citing resources from your research. The citation style sometimes depends on the academic discipline involved and sometimes depends on the publisher/ place of publishing. For example:

  • APA (American Psychological Association) is used by Education, Psychology, and some Sciences
  • ACS (American Chemical Society) is often used in Chemistry and some of the physical sciences
  • MLA (Modern Language Association) style is used by the Humanities
  • Chicago & Turabian (two styles very similar in formatting) are generally used by Business, History, and the Fine Arts

REMEMBER: Ultimately your professor will decide which citation style will be used, remember to consult with your professor to determine what is required in your assignment.

Try this

Plagiarism Prevention LibGuide

The Library has created a LibGuide that can help you Identify & Avoid Plagiarism that can help you to avoid accidental plagiarism mistakes.  Remember you could be expelled or suspended if found guilty of plagiarism.