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Example:
As Brenda Spatt says in her book, Writing from
Sources, "If you present another person's
ideas as your own, you are plagiarizing even if you
use your own words" (440). She illustrates this
point with the following example. Suppose you want
to use the material in the following passage, which
appears in Leo Gurko's Ernest Hemingway and the
Pursuit of Heroism:
| The
Hemingways put themselves on short rations, ate,
drank, and entertained as little as possible, pounced
eagerly on the small checks that arrived in the
mail as payment for accepted stories, and were intensely
conscious of being poor. The sensation was not altogether
unpleasant. Their extreme youth, the excitement
of living abroad, even the unexpected joy of parenthood,
have their poverty a romantic flavor. |
If you write the following sentence
without any documentation, you have committed plagiarism:
| Despite
all the economies that they had to make and all
the pleasures they had to do without, the Hemingways
rather enjoyed the experience of being poor. |
To avoid plagiarism, cite your
source:
| As Leo Gurko
has suggested, the experience of being poor was
not altogether unpleasant for the Hemingways (33).
|
What
Must be Cited?
1.
All words quoted directly from another source
| "It appears
that both repeat dieters and bulimics can be characterized
as having low self-esteem and an external locus
of control (Dykens and Gerrard 288). |
This is the rule about plagiarism that most students
are familiar with. It is straightforward: Put other
people's words in quotation marks, and include a parenthetical
citation or footnote for the source of the words.
2. All facts, figures,
and statistics that are not common knowledge
| Gold
prices reached a ten-year high of $12.33 an ounce
on October 10, 1993. (Scott 23). |
When in doubt
as to whether something is common knowledge or not,
cite your source
3. All ideas paraphrased
from a source
| According
to Dykens and Gerrar, people who are bulimic or
who diet repeatedly can be characterized as having
low self-esteem and feelings of being out of control
(288). |
Important: paraphrasing
does not mean changing one or two words in a sentence.
Paraphrasing means putting an idea into your own words!
For example:
| Original,
from Wilson and Blackhurst (1999): |
The
fact that the media-portrayed standard of thinness
is unattainable for most women is precisely what
makes it such an effective marketing tool. Encouraging
women to measure themselves against this standard
allows advertisers to exploit not only women's
inevitable dissatisfaction with their own bodies
but also their resulting feelings of failure and
inadequacy. When women inevitably fail to achieve
the thin ideal, food advertisers are quick to
suggest that this failure is cause for guilt and
shame. Food advertisements signal to women that
the failure is more than a lapse in willpower;
it is a sign of weak character, even moral inadequacy. |
Plagiarism:
(Changing a few words around, and using a few
synonyms is not paraphrasing!) |
The media portrays
standards of thinness that are unattainable for
most women, and they use this portrayal as an
effective marketing tool. Encouraging females
to compare themselves against this standard of
thinness allows advertisers to exploit women's
poor body images and their resulting feelings
of failure and inadequacy. Food advertisers are
quick to suggest that the failure of women to
achieve the thin ideal is cause for guilt and
shame. Food advertisements send a signal to women
that failing to be thin is a sign of weak character
and moral shortcomings. |
| Still
Plagiarism (even with the citation at the
end): |
The media portrays
standards of thinness that are unattainable for
most women, and they use this portrayal as an
effective marketing tool. Encouraging females
to compare themselves against this standard of
thinness allows advertisers to exploit women's
poor body images and their resulting feelings
of failure and inadequacy. Food advertisers are
quick to suggest that the failure of women to
achieve the thin ideal is cause for guilt and
shame. Food advertisements send a signal to women
that failing to be thin is a sign of weak character
and moral shortcomings (Wilson and Blackhurst
1999). |
| Not
Plagiarism. Successful Paraphrasing: |
Wilson and Blackhurst
(1999) note that food advertisers capitalize on
and exacerbate women's poor body images. According
to the authors, food advertisers deliberately
encourage feelings of guilt and inferiority among
female consumers by creating ads that feature
unrealistically thin women. |
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