Rules for Writers: Chapter 57 - Citing sources; avoid plagiarism

     Together a research paper is a combination of your thoughts and ideas along with your other sources. In order to be fairly decent in writing an honest paper, sources should be credited to the writers that you borrowed information from. If borrowed information is not cited, then the role of plagiarism is committed, which means it is copied and stolen without crediting the original writer.

     There are three different ways to commit plagiarism that is failing to cite borrowed ideas and quotations, failing to summarize and paraphrase information in your own words, and lastly failing to enclose barrowed sources in quotations marks. (Hacker 480). I also consider that even if summaries in your own words are too close to the original written language it should still be cited.

     All summaries, paraphrases, quotations, statistics, and other certain facts must be cited. Usually it is acceptable to not cite information that is repeated several times. If it appears to be specific information shown only a few times, then such information should be cited. It is recommended to cite using the author-date system.

     The system are as followed: last names of the authors along with the date of publication in parentheses, cited materials is followed by page numbers in parentheses, and at the end of the paper, alphabetize your list of references. This gives complete information about where sources are found. (Hacker 480)

     I agree that it is important to cite information or quotations borrowed from other writers. It fairly gives rightful credit to those sources. Since I have been writing and typing in this class, I have tried to keep it a habit, a good habit that is, to maintain fairness for any future writings and prevent any plagiarism in my part.