But if the reader does need to use a particular source to follow up or verify the information, a reference to that source is necessary. What if I reuse an idea or sentence from a paper that I wrote for a previous class? Do I need to cite my own paper? In most cases, no. Your bibliography should only include sources that you use. However, there are exceptions to this rule, especially for higher-level work such as senior theses. Plagiarism is a serious issue in the academic community.
Please visit our online tutorial: Plagiarism for an entertaining and interesting look at why people plagiarize and strategies to avoid it. For many research papers you NEED to do this in order to prove your own points. So use their ideas! Use their words! Read on for more information and examples.
Doing research for a paper is an exploration and learning process. By acknowledging our sources we show our reader the path we took to come to our conclusions. Citations reflect the careful and thorough work you have put into locating and exploring your sources. Citations help readers understand the context of your argument and are a courtesy to the reader, who may share your interest in a particular area of study. Citations allow you to acknowledge those authors who contributed to your learning and your work.
Citations, by illustrating your own learning process, also draw attention to the originality and legitimacy of your own ideas. By citing sources you demonstrate your integrity and skill as a responsible student and participant in your field of study. While professors and scholars may have specific requirements based on the needs of their discipline, there are cases where you should always cite your sources.
Direct quotes of more than one word. Paraphrasing or summarizing. However, if you have cited other sources and then go back to one you had cited earlier, it is a good idea to mention at least the author's name again and the work if you have referred to more than one by this author to avoid confusion.
Taking the exact words from an original source is called quoting. You should quote material when you believe the way the original author expresses an idea is the most effective means of communicating the point you want to make. If you want to borrow an idea from an author, but do not need his or her exact words, you should try paraphrasing instead of quoting.
Most of the time, paraphrasing and summarizing your sources is sufficient but remember that you still have to cite them! Most of the time, you can just identify a source and quote from it, as in the first example above. Sometimes, however, you will need to modify the words or format of the quotation in order to fit in your paper.
Whenever you change the original words of your source, you must indicate that you have done so. Otherwise, you would be claiming the original author used words that he or she did not use.
But be careful not to change too many words! You could accidentally change the meaning of the quotation and falsely claim the author said something they did not. For example, let's say you want to quote from the following passage in an essay called "United Shareholders of America," by Jacob Weisberg:.
When you quote, you generally want to be as concise as possible. Keep only the material that is strictly relevant to your own ideas. So here you would not want to quote the middle sentence, since it is repeated again in the more informative last sentence.
However, just skipping it would not work -- the final sentence would not make sense without it. So, you have to change the wording a little bit. In order to do so, you will need to use some editing symbols. Your quotation might end up looking like this:. The brackets around the word [money] indicate that you have substituted that word for other words the author used. To make a substitution this important, however, you had better be sure that [money] is what the final phrase meant -- if the author intentionally left it ambiguous, you would be significantly altering his meaning.
That would make you guilty of fraudulent attribution. In this case, however, the paragraph following the one quoted explains that the author is referring to money, so it is okay. As a general rule, it is okay to make minor grammatical and stylistic changes to make the quoted material fit in your paper, but it is not okay to significantly alter the structure of the material or its content. When you have "embedded quotes," or quotations within quotations, you should switch from the normal quotation marks "" to single quotation marks '' to show the difference.
But there are a number of other reasons to cite sources: citations are extremely helpful to anyone who wants to find out more about your ideas and where they came from not all sources are good or right -- your own ideas may often be more accurate or interesting than those of your sources.
Proper citation will keep you from taking the rap for someone else's bad ideas citing sources shows the amount of research you've done citing sources strengthens your work by lending outside support to your ideas Doesn't citing make my work seem less original? When do I need to cite?
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