Objective: To decide when and how to use information from outside sources
and to learn how to avoid plagiarism.
Using Outside Sources
When you write an essay that requires library or Internet research, you will
gather information before you actually sit down to write the paper. Once you
have that information, you have to decide how you are going to include it in
your paper. You have three choices: summarize, paraphrase, or direct quote.
When do you use each? How do you know which option is best in a given situation?
Let's look at all three options and the functions they perform. To create examples,
we will use the following news article posted May 13, 2003:
By Foot and Chopper, Bush Surveys Tornado Damage
During a drenching downpour, Bush surveyed Saldana by helicopter and on
foot. Wearing a suit and dark blue jacket with an umbrella over his head,
the president saw first-hand the damage caused by a twister which touched
down May 4 and blasted the town center apart with winds estimated at up to
208 mph. The main street was completely flattened, including stone buildings.
Wooden splinters were scattered about. The downtown was demolished as it prepared
to celebrate its 133rd anniversary this weekend.
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Summarize: Summaries present the main points from a long passage,
article, or even a book, and condense information essential to your discussion
down to two or three sentences. Summaries are particularly good for background
information. You can find examples and tips for writing summaries here. (Lesson
8: Summarizing Texts)
Example: President Bush visited Saldana, a city where a major tornado
touched down and did major damage on May 4, 2003.
Did you notice that there is no documentation here, no acknowledgement of
the source that the information came from? There is no need to cite this,
because the information is common knowledge. Because there are probably dozens
of sources for this vague passage, no citation is necessary. Don't be confused!
Summaries that contain specific information must be cited. We will discuss
the idea of citations a bit more when we look at plagiarism.
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Paraphrase: In a nutshell, paraphrasing is changing an author's
words but keeping the ideas. Sometimes paraphrases are as long as the original
source! Paraphrases reduce a complicated idea and make the language simpler
for readers to understand. Sometimes you can take boring research material
and make it more interesting by paraphrasing.
Example: As Saldana's citizens prepared for their town's 133rd anniversary,
disaster struck their town ("By Foot" 1A).
Paraphrasing doesn't mean that you have to use all the information in the
passage. Did you notice that? Using paraphrasing lets you pick and choose
what parts of the information fit what you want to illustrate. This sentence
is also cited, because it contains information that most people wouldn't know.
For more information about how to cite information, click here.
Direct Quote: Direct quotes are good when the source states
ideas that are unique and expressed in a particularly strong way or when you
want to quote the author to give yourself an authoritative voice. Quoting
means using the authors' words exactly as they appear in the source. When
choosing a direct quote, you need to be sure that it illustrates the real
point you want to make in your paper, not just contain an interesting idea.
You can find more about using examples here. (LINK to Exemplification lesson.)
A sentence with a parenthetical citation: In a Reuter's news article
dated May 13, 2003, the author describes the destruction: "The main
street was completely flattened, including stone buildings. Wooden splinters
were scattered about" ("By Foot" 1A).
A sentence that changes the author's words: In a Reuter's news article
dated May 13, 2003, the destruction of Saldana is described: "The main
street was completely flattened [. . . ] [ and w]ooden splinters were scattered
about" ("By Foot" 1A).
Note: You use brackets around words that are not the original author's words.
If you change something in a quotation and put your words in, you need brackets
around what you change.
A sentence that leaves out some of the author's words: In a Reuter's
news article dated May 13, 2003, the destruction of Saldana is described:
"The main street was completely flattened [. . . .] Wooden splinters
were scattered about" ("By Foot" 1A).
Note: You can also leave out words in your direct quotes, and use ellipses
to show that words are missing. Did you notice that there are spaces between
the dots in ellipses? Here, there are four dots because the words left out
include a period. If the words you leave out do not include a period, there
should only be three dots.
We should also say something about long quotes. Long quotes are defined
as anything over four lines of typed prose and over three lines of poetry.
They are indented ten spaces from the left margin and double spaced (if
your paper is double spaced). Choosing to use a long quote is a tricky decision.
Often, it is better to edit the quote a little to shorten it (see the brackets
example above) or choose to use brief phrases from the quote and paraphrase.
It is tempting to use long quotes to make your paper longer, but the chances
are very good your instructor will notice that you are "padding"
your writing.
Exercise
Using the following text from an Associated Press article on May 13, 2003,
you can practice summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. Read the short article,
and then test your ability to use each technique.
US Adding Color to $20 Bill
American greenbacks are getting a bit more colorful. A touch of peach, blue
and yellow along with the traditional green and black are featured on the
new $20 bill, the first to be colorized in a project to thwart counterfeiters.
The Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which makes the
nation's paper currency, took the wrappers off the redesigned $20 Tuesday.
The new bills won't appear in cash registers or ATM machines until late this
year.
Defining Plagiarism
Plagiarism is one of those scary words that everyone knows is bad, but few
are quite sure what it is.
In its most serious form, plagiarism is copying someone else's work from books,
magazines, newspapers, journals, the Internet, or any other source and calling
it your own. It can also be using the work of others and calling it your own,
such as borrowing a friend's paper or buying a paper from an Internet service.
Most people don't plagiarize in this serious form, but some honest people accidentally
plagiarize because they don't know that this is a problem or understand how
to avoid it.
Plagiarism is sometimes called "theft of intellectual property,"
and it refers to words, pictures, and ideas. That means it goes beyond just
borrowing and not citing someone else's words to include any kind of visual
aid and even an idea based on what another person wrote or said. Most instructors
and schools have policies about plagiarism that define heavy consequences, such
as failing the course or being suspended from school.
Of course, you have to use other people's ideas and words when you write a
research paper, and sometimes even in papers that are not really "research."
So, the trick is to learn how to use them honestly.
How Can You Avoid Plagiarism
The easiest way to avoid plagiarism is to cite everything you use from outside
sources. But, you may have heard your instructor say that you don't have to
cite common knowledge. This idea of common knowledge is sometimes hard to judge.
For instance, you might read at a website that there is a new virus on the internet.
Included in the text is a common definition of a virus as a program that will
harm the files or controls of a computer. Most people already know that definition,
so a simple definition in your paper would not really have to be cited. On the
other hand, if you explored the Norton Antivirus Website and found that the
Klez virus was most active in Texas and often special cleaning programs didn't
work to repair the damage it does, you should recognize that most people wouldn't
know these particulars, and you would cite your source of that information.
Let's look at some text from the McAfee company about the Klez virus and then
work with ways you might use it in a paper and then cite it.
Some Internet users have been signed up for strange mailing lists that they
have never heard of. Others have lost their Internet access after they were
accused of spamming. Some received complaints from their friends and colleagues
that they kept sending them pornography and others have received e-mailed
pornography from their aunts. All these people are in fact experiencing strange
effects of the Klez computer virus. These emails, containing the Klez virus,
are causing frustration and confusion. [The Klez virus] has infected hundreds
of thousands of computers since it was first discovered in April of 2002.
Variants of the Klez worm are the most common viruses circulating on the Internet
this month.
Common Knowledge Needs No Citation
Example: Like all viruses, the Klez virus causes frustration and confusion.
This sentence points out a fact that most computer users are already aware
of. You would use a general sentence like this before you got to specific
facts, and even though it has the words "frustration and confusion,"
which are used in the original, it does not need to be cited. Paraphrasing Needs Citations
Example: The Klez virus, or worm, causes e-mail to be sent to everyone in
the infected computer's address book, often signing them up for odd mailing
lists or even sending them pornography (McAfee).
This sentence has specific information from the article about what the Klez
virus causes. In this case, there is nothing that looks exactly like the text,
but the information is probably not common knowledge. Direct Quotes Always Need Citations
Example 1: According to the McAfee website, some victims of the Klez virus
even "lost their Internet access after they were accused of spamming."
In this example, the source is written into the sentence so there is no parenthetical
citation at the end.
Example 2: One of the most common viruses circulating on the internet, "
[The Klez virus,] has infected hundreds of thousands of computers since it
was first discovered in April of 2002" (McAfee).
This information would only be known by an expert or someone who tracks computer
viruses. It is very specific and even includes dates (this is a good hint
to tell you that you need to use a citation).
The examples here are cited in MLA format, but of course there are other formatting
styles. For a further discussion of how to cite information, you can go to
Lesson 15: MLA and APA Documentation.
Summary
When using outside sources in your writing, you need to decide what information
is necessary to your paper and how you will present it. You have three choices:
- Summarize
- Paraphrase
- Direct Quote
Once you make this decision, you must be sure that you cite the information
carefully to avoid plagiarism.
  
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