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Giving Credit

When you use the words or original ideas of another person in your writing, you need to document, or give credit to, the sources of those words or ideas. If exact words from the original are used, quotation marks are necessary. If you paraphrase, or restate the idea in your own words, quotation marks are not required, but documentation of the source is still required. 

Avoiding Plagiarism

Copying someone else's work or ideas and misrepresenting them as your own is called plagiarism. Committing plagiarism, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is a violation of academic integrity and can result in suspension from school. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to:

• Take good notes and record important citation information (author, titles, dates, pages, etc.)
• Avoid copying and pasting from the Web and other electronic resources
• Use your own ideas and words
• Give credit for copied, adapted, or paraphrased material using a proper citation style

For more assistance, review the plagiarism resources available from the MCC Writing Center.

Selecting a Citation "Style"

There are several different formats for documentation.  Your instructor should indicated which citation "style" you should follow. It's important that you stick with one style for a paper and not combine or mix styles.

The most common citation styles are MLA (Modern Languages Association) and APA (American Psychological Association.) APA and MLA are similar in that  you briefly identify your sources in the text of your paper (in parantheses), then give the full information in the "works cited" or "references" list at the end of the paper. For example:

MLA in-text citation: (Foerstel 23)

MLA full citation:

Foerstel, Herbert. Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries.

Westport: Greenwood, 1994.

For more detailed information, visit the MLA or APA help pages.

Chicago/Turabian citation styles require footnotes and endnotes, which are raised numbers at the end of an idea or quoted words to link the reader to the source which is given either at the bottom of the page (footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote). Chicago/Turabian style generally requires a full list (or bibliography) of sources at the end of the paper.

Sample footnote:

1. Geoffrey Symcox, Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675-1730

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 167.

For more detailed information, visit the Chicago/Turabian help pages.

Other Styles of citation or documentation can be used in colleges, particularly in the sciences and social sciences. Your instructor should specificy which style you should follow. For more information on these less common citation styles, visit the Other Styles help pages.