Documentation
Documenting your sources is critical in college since it can mean the difference between passing or failing an assignment, a course, or college depending on the severity of the offense. Learn about plagiarism as well as some basic documentation guidelines in this section.
Plagiarism is the act of stealing and passing off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary online). Therefore, to avoid plagiarism and its negative consequences it is important to tell your readers where you got your information.
Diana Hacker, in her book A Writer's Reference, offers some suggestions for avoiding plagiarism.
- First of all, it is important to cite quotations and borrowed ideas.
- Quotations are the direct words of another person, either spoken or written and must be enclosed by quotation marks.
- Borrowed ideas can take many forms: statistics or little know facts such as new research; paraphrases and summaries of text; and tables, graphs, diagrams, or other images.
- Summaries and paraphrases must be put in your own words or it is plagiarism. Using too many words from the original source and sticking with a similar sentence structure all lead to poor paraphrasing. The best way to paraphrase is to put the source aside and attempt to write from memory, then go back and check your text for accuracy.
For more information on how to avoid plagiarism, I recommend visting The Paradigm Online Writing Lab " documenting your sources" section, another writing lab, or a writer's refence book.
Documentation Styles
There are Four Major Documentation Styles:
- MLA- most often used in the Humanities
- APA- most often used in the Social Sciences
- Chicago-most often used in History
- CBE -most often used in the Sciences
For more information on these styles and their use, I recommend looking at a style manual, writer's reference, or visiting the web site Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker at http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc
