Bibliography - a list of the books and articles that have been used by someone
when writing a particular book or article.
Plagiarism - Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or
without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without
full acknowledgement.
Citation is often used to cite a piece of work. This is to acknowledge the
contribution of the other writers and researchers in your work. It is also a way to
give credit to the writers from whom you borrowed words and ideas.
Failure to cite basically means that you are claiming that the entire paper and
all its information are yours. That is untrue and it’s called plagiarism, an act of
taking words, ideas, or information as your own. In writing or speaking, always
give credit whenever you use: another person’s idea, opinion, or theory, any
facts, statistics, graphs, drawing-any piece of information-that are common
knowledge, quotations of another person’s spoken, or written words and
paraphrase of another person’s spoken and written words.
The purpose of a citation is usually to provide support or evidence for what
you are saying; it tells the reader where this support or evidence can be found,
and it typically does this by providing a reference to bibliography, a list of
detailed bibliographic information provided at the end of the document.
APA and MLA are two of the most commonly used citation styles.
The APA manual (published by the American Psychological Association) is mostly
used in social science and education fields.
The MLA handbook (published by the Modern Language Association) is mostly
used in humanities fields.
In both styles, a source citation consists of:
∙ A brief parenthetical citation in the text
∙ A full reference at the end of the paper
When to Cite Sources:
1. Summary
When you summarize or briefly describe a passage written by an author, an
in-text citation is needed. This is when you read a text, consider the main points,
and provide a shorter version of what you learned. Summarizing involves
putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s).
Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source.
Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview
of the source material.
2. Paraphrase
A restatement of an idea in roughly the same length as the author originally
described it. This is when you restate what the original author said in your own
words and in your own tone. Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from
source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to
the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original
passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it
slightly.
3. Quotation
The exact same words as the author used, presented between quotation
marks. If you are stating word-for-word what someone else has already written,
you must give credit to the original author. Not doing so would mean that you’re
letting your reader believe these words are your own and represent your own
effort. Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of
the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be
attributed to the original author.
