Citations and Academic Integrity

MLA Citations

MLA Style is currently in its 9th edition (as of November 2021). Disciplines that use MLA Style are English Studies, Foreign Languages, Literary Criticism, Cultural Studies. Talk to your teacher about the proper format for your paper.

APA Citations

APA Style is currently in its 7th edition (as of November 2021). APA is most often used in the disciplines of Social Sciences (Psychology, Sociology, Economics, etc.), Business, Nursing. Talk to your teacher about which style you should use for your paper. 

• Basic Rules:

  • Title your bibliography with the word References (no italics or bold)

  • Alphabetize list by the author's last name (or article title if no author)

  • Invert author's name (Last name, author's initials)

  • Use an ampersand & for and ( Smith, J.K., & Wright, K.)

  • For 5 or more authors in your text, use et al. (Latin for and others):  Smith et al. (2015) argued...

  • Place the date immediately after the author's name: Smith (2017) claims that......

  • Capitalize only the first word in the title, the first word in the subtitle, and proper noun  (EXAMPLE: Physics of car crashes: A long term study)

  • Capitalize journal titles

  • Do not use quotation marks around article titles

  • Include the DOI (digital object identifier) if possible. If not, include the URL

What is Plagiarism?

• Intentionally or unintentionally stealing someone else’s original thoughts, ideas or messages without giving credit.

• Intellectual fraud.

• Can have serious consequences including fines and/or academic punishment.

• Most plagiarism is unintentional and can be prevented with good citation habits.

• The Plagiarism Spectrum
  Identifies 10 common types of plagiarism to help you avoid the pitfalls of improper citation.

• How well do you know plagiarism?
  Take this quiz to see how much you know about plagiarism.

Break the Habit

Break these Bad Habits to Prevent Accidental Plagiarism

• Copying and pasting from a source without using quotation marks or citations.

• Rewording ideas without a citation.

• Reusing your own paper or sections of your paper for another course. 

• Filling your paper with quotes, even if cited correctly. Quotations should be used to support your original ideas.

• Paraphrasing by just changing a few words.

• Forgetting to keep track of your sources.

• Starting your assignment too late.