Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [195]
You also reduce the risk of plagiarism if you consult sources after—not before—you have done some preliminary thinking on the subject. If you have become somewhat invested in your own thoughts on the matter, you will be able to use the sources in a more active way, in effect, making them part of a dialogue.
Is it plagiarism if I include things in my paper I thought of with another student or a member of my family?
Most academic behavior codes, under the category called “collusion,” allow for students’ cooperative efforts only with the explicit consent of the instructor.The same general rule goes for plagiarizing yourself—that is, for submitting the same paper in more than one class. If you have questions about what constitutes collusion in a particular class, be sure to ask your professor.
What about looking at secondary sources when my professor hasn’t asked me to? Is this a form of cheating?
It can be a form of cheating if the intent of the assignment was to get you to develop a particular kind of thinking skill. In this case, looking at others’ ideas may actually retard your learning process and leave you feeling that you couldn’t possibly learn to arrive at ideas on your own.
Professors usually look favorably on students who are willing to take the time to do extra reading on a subject, but it is essential that, even in class discussion, you make it clear that you have consulted outside sources. To conceal that fact is to present others’ ideas as your own. Even in class discussion, if you bring up an idea you picked up on the Internet, be sure to say so explicitly.
C. CITING SOURCES: Four Documentation Styles by Reference Librarian Kelly Cannon
The four most common styles of documentation are those established by:
the American Psychological Association (APA),
the Council of Science Editors (CSE),
the University Press of Chicago, and
the Modern Language Association (MLA).
Note: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries offer authoritative examples of basic citations of electronic and print resources in all four styles at http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/citations/.
For citation examples not given at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries website, it is advisable to consult the various organizations’ printed manuals—Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition), the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition), Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, and the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th edition). It is important to use the most recent edition available of each of these manuals.
You have probably already discovered that some professors are more concerned than others that students obey the particulars of a given documentation style. Virtually all faculty across the curriculum agree, however, that the most important rule for writers to follow in documenting sources is formal consistency. That is, all of your in-text citations or footnotes/endnotes should follow the same format, and all of your endof-text citations should follow the same format.
Once you begin doing most of your writing in a particular discipline, you may want to purchase or access on the Internet the more detailed style guide adhered to by that discipline. Because documentation styles differ not only from discipline to discipline but also even from journal to journal within a discipline, you should consult your professor about which documentation format he or she wishes you to use in a given course.
THE FOUR DOCUMENTATION STYLES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
The various styles differ in the specific ways that they organize the bibliographical information, but they