Avoiding Plagiarism

useful ideas, make sure that you record, in hard-copy or electronic form, the source of each piece of borrowed information. You might also want to bookmark any online sources you use. Save these to a research folder rather than just among your other bookmarks, or use a tagging service like Diigo to assign topic tags to each source. OR, better yet, use Noodletools to help you collect bibliographical information and make notes

In your research notes, put quotations around words you've directly quoted, followed by the author's last name. OR,

Use one card/sheet of paper/computer file for each source: put the bibliographical information at the top of the page and copy or cut and paste the information you want to potentially use. Remember to include page numbers from book sources and PDFs.

As you make use of these ideas/quotations/ summaries/paraphrases, etc. be sure to include the source in your draft. You could number each source and place that number or the name of the author--be sure to include the page number of paginated source--in brackets at the end of the borrowed information. BUT, you will still need to put the correct citation information (which depends on the citation style required by your teacher) in your final copy.

How to paraphrase properly

Every borrowed word, idea, concept, interpretation, summary, paraphrase, map, chart, picture, graphic, statistic, etc. ANYTHING you use that is not your own original idea, must be cited.

As the author, you must make it clear to your reader where your own ideas and words begin and end, and where borrowed material begins and ends. One of the best ways to do this is to include a phrase or clause before the borrowed material that introduces the source; e.g.

According to Melissa Chiu, Head of Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, "many patients with post traumatic stress syndrome find it extremely difficult to confront circumstances which mirror the original trauma" (Chiu 24).

In this example, the quotation marks and citation clearly show which words are the author's and which words were borrowed.

For additional examples click here

How you cite will depend on which style of citation you are required to use.

For style guides, click here

You must include a properly formatted "Works Cited" or "References" page and possibly a "Works Consulted" depending on which style of citation you are required to use. Style depends on subject area and teacher or professor preference.

The "Works Cited" or "References" list includes information which the reader could use to find the sources of the information used in your work. And think about this: if one of the sources you are using for your paper/project does not have any References or Works Cited information, you might want to ask yourself whether it really is a reliable source.

There are tools that you can use to help you create the entries for each of your sources as well creating the list, as well. A great tool is NoodleTools. You'll need to set up an account. Just click on the link above and use the "Access via G Suite" option. You can use the account to store information and create research notes as well as tracking your citation information. And, if your university or college has Noodletools, you'll be able to transfer your account when you leave EDHS. Another helpful tool is Citation Machine, which creates a bibliographical entry using the URL (web address) of an online source: you may still need to find some of the missing information.

HEADS UP: Many databases, including some of the ones in UG2GO, have properly formatted bibliographical entries that you can copy and paste. Sometimes you have to click a "citation" or "reference" link to get to it.