British Literature I, Anglo-Saxon to Early Modern: Citing Sources

Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s ideas and expressions.  The theft is the same, whether students copy verbatim or simply rephrase the ideas of another person without properly acknowledging or documenting the source.  Students are expected to exercise great diligence and care to distinguish their own ideas and language from information derived from other sources.  Whenever another person’s ideas are used, such use must be documented with appropriate citation and reference to reveal the source and the extent to which that source has been used. Sources requiring appropriate acknowledgement include published primary and secondary materials, electronic media, and information and opinions gained directly from other people.

Examples of plagiarism include:

• copying words, sentences, or passages from a text, such as a book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, the paper of another, or a paper prepared by anyone other than the one who submits the paper, without indicating the source of those words, sentences, or passages;
• using quotations without copying them exactly, failing to punctuate them correctly, or giving credit for citations;
• paraphrasing or summarizing another writer’s ideas, even if one does not quote the writer directly, without giving credit to the writer;
• failing to give adequate bibliographical information to the reader who may need to refer to the source the writer of the paper has used; and
• using graphs, charts, tables, or other printed or visual aids without giving credit to the source from which they were taken.

The above is excerpted from pp. 49-50 of the 2004-2005 Shorter Course Catalog.

How to Avoid Plagiarism?

Use the tips on these sites to make sure that you don’t unintentionally plagiarize: