Tuesday, December 01, 2020

Giving credit to your sources

General structure of a database citation in MLA 8:

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of the source.” Title of the first container, First name Last name of any contributors, Version, Numbers, Publisher, Publication date, Name of Database, URL or DOI.

Common items are highlighted above.  Less common are items such as contributors and publisher.  These items should be included if available but often are not available.  

Use the following capitalization rule for your article (or website page) titles:  capitalize the first word of the article title and also capitalize any proper nouns.  All other words should be lower case.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is something you have to work hard to avoid -- like getting wet when it is raining.  In other words, if you just go about your business as is your habit, you are likely to get wet, just as you are likely to unintentionally plagiarize unless you take safeguards:
1) acknowledge your sources -- bibliography
2) refer to sources as needed
3) use quotation marks for quotes.  If you don't want to put something in your own words, if in doubt, use a direct quote.
4) paraphrase information when taking notes

How to Paraphrase:
  • change the words
  • change the order of words
  • change the structure of the author’s words
  • collapse lists

    An excellent site on the intricacies of plagiarism and how to avoid it is Plagiarism.org

No comments: