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Research, Plagiarism, and MLA

A Guide to Help You Cite Sources Correctly

Evaluating Sources

  • Each potential source should be evaluated to determine whether or not it is relevant and reliable
  • A source is relevant if it pertains to your research topic
  • A source is reliable if it provides trustworthy information
  • Evaluating sources requires you to think critically and make judgments about which sources will be useful to your research

Judging Reliability

  • Ask yourself the following questions:
  • What information can you find about the writer’s credentials?
  • Who is the publisher?
  • Is there a Works Cited page with a list of the works consulted in the article?
  • Is the work balanced in tone, or does the writer appear biased?

Judging Relevance

  • Ask yourself the following questions:
  • Do the sources title and subtitle indicate that it addresses your topic?
  • What is the publication date?
  • Does the work contain subheadings?
  • Is there an abstract?

Internet Sources

  • Caution should be used when assessing Internet sources
  • Anyone can design a web page that looks authoritative but contains utter nonsense
  • You must question every source, but you should be especially wary of Internet sources and question their validity

Internet Sources

  • When you quote from an online source, there is no guarantee that the material you are quoting originated with that site
  • In other words, the person who created the website might not have received permission from the person who is responsible for the material

Guidelines for Evaluating Internet Sources

  • Is the author named? Is the website affiliated with an organization or sponsor?
  • Who is the intended audience?
  • What is the purpose of the site?
  • Is there any bias?
  • How does the information address your topic or thesis?

Checklist to Evaluate Websites

  • CARS (Credible, Accurate, Reasonable, and Supported) Method
  • Credibility
  • The source is trustworthy
  • The argument and use of evidence are clear and logical
  • The author’s or sponsor’s credentials are available
  • Quality control is evident (correct grammar, functional links)

Checklist to Evaluate Websites

  • Credibility (cont.)
  • Source is a known or respected authority
  • There is organizational support (university, research institution, or news publication)
  • Source appears at or near top of Google search (Google ranks sites according to popularity; top sites are most frequently accessed by people with similar interests)

Checklist to Evaluate Websites

  • Accuracy
  • Site updated frequently (and includes update information)
  • Site is factual, not speculative, and provides evidence for its assertions
  • Site is detailed and comprehensive (additional resources, list of references)
  • Site is complete and accurate

Checklist to Evaluate Websites

  • Reasonableness
  • Site is fair, balanced, and objective
  • Site makes its purpose clear (not selling or promoting anything)
  • Contains no conflicts of interest
  • Content does not include fallacies or a slanted tone

Checklist to Evaluate Websites

  • Support
  • Site lists sources for its information
  • Clarifies which content it is responsible for and which links are created by other authors or sponsors
  • Provides contact information for its authors and/or sponsors
  • Follows the conventions of a specific citation style

Helpful websites

Organizing Research

  • For each source that you research, be sure to record the following:
  • Call number of books or reference works found in a library
  • Complete URL of each website
  • Authors, editors, and translators for each work
  • Title of chapter, article, or website

Organizing Research

  • Title of book, periodical, or website in which the chapter, article, or page appears
  • For books: place, publisher, and date of publication and, if applicable, edition or volume numbers
  • For articles: date and volume number, and, if applicable, issue and page numbers
  • For websites: date you accessed site and date website was last updated

Organizing Research

  • Copy or print out anything you intend to use in your essay (book chapter, article, website) and annotate as you read:
  • Record your questions, reactions, and ideas in the margins
  • Comment in the margins on ideas that agree with or differ from your ideas
  • Try to summarize a difficult passage to make sure you comprehend the material
  • Highlight any statements that are important to your thesis or argument

What is plagiarism?

  • Derived from Latin word meaning “to kidnap”
  • When you plagiarize, you steal someone’s ideas and present those ideas as yours
  • This is considered a serious offense, and at minimum, you will receive a zero for a plagiarized paper

What is plagiarism?

  • Both intentional and unintentional plagiarism are grounds for receiving a zero on a paper.
  • Intentional: blatant disregard for the rules of copyright laws
  • Ex: Downloading a paper from the Internet
  • Unintentional: not giving a source credit as a result of sloppy research
  • Ex: Acknowledging but not properly citing a source

What is plagiarism?

  • The following are considered plagiarism:
  • Presenting the work of others as your own work
  • Downloading material from the Internet without any acknowledgment
  • Using the ideas or words you find in a print or Web source without acknowledging where those ideas or words come from
  • Forgetting to add a citation to ideas and words that are not your own

What is plagiarism?

  • When summarizing or paraphrasing, you must use your own words and sentence structure to avoid plagiarism.
  • Changing a word here or there while keeping the source’s sentence structure or phrasing constitutes plagiarism, even if you cite the source!

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Do not rely too heavily on one source; if you do, you may begin to use that person’s thoughts as your own
  • Keep accurate records while doing research and taking notes with a systematic method of indicating quotation, paraphrase, summary, or your own comments. If you don’t you may lose track of where an idea came from.

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Stay organized. When you take notes, be sure to put quotation marks around phrases or sentences taken verbatim from a source.
  • Make a record of each source (copy) so you have the information you need for appropriate documentation
  • Use MLA documentation style properly

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Print out any online source that you use, note the date that you viewed it, and note the complete web address for correct citation
  • Never include in your essay a passage or idea that you have copied from someone else without acknowledging and documenting the source

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Never use exactly the same sequence of ideas and organization of argument as a source
  • When you use a single key word or three or more words from your source, put quotation marks around it and document it accordingly
  • Always cite a summary or paraphrase

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Never simply substitute synonyms for a few words in the source or move words around
  • If you cut and paste material from a website into your paper, use a different font, color, or size to identify the material

Suggestions for Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Make sure that every in-text citation has a corresponding entry on the Works Cited page and vice versa
  • Cite all sources (ideas, opinions, facts, and statistics) that are not considered common knowledge

What is Common Knowledge?

  • Common knowledge: information that an audience could be expected to know
  • Citation is not necessary for facts regarded as common knowledge
  • Ex: dates of the Civil War
  • If you are in doubt about whether a fact is common knowledge or not, cite it!

Quoting

  • Be sure that you have a method for differentiating between a direct quotation, a paraphrase, and a summary
  • Direct quotation: a key word, phrase, or sentence that is written exactly like the original text
  • Direct quotations should be placed in quotation marks and should be documented

Quoting

  • Beware of writing a string of quotations or paraphrases one after another
  • If you use more than one quotation per paragraph, revise your essay to include more of your own reflections on the topic

Paraphrasing

  • Paraphrase: putting someone else’s statements into your own words, usually shorter and less detailed than the original
  • You must still credit the original writer for the ideas even though they are presented in your own words because the ideas are not yours

Paraphrasing

  • When you paraphrase, you should use a different sentence structure than the original work
  • Using synonyms for some of the terms but retaining the phrasing from the original is still plagiarism, even if you give that source credit
  • It is best to put the original away while you write the paraphrase so that you don’t fall into the trap of following the same sentence structure as the author

Summarizing

  • Summary: stating the main idea of a work, condensing the original text into a much shorter version
  • Summaries also have to give credit to the original author
  • If you don’t understand what the author is saying, you should not be trying to summarize the main idea of the work, nor should you be using it in your paper

Summarizing and Paraphrasing

  • Things to remember:
  • Use your own words and sentence structure at all times
  • Do not have the original text in front of you while writing
  • Understand the passage completely before attempting to write your version
  • Put any words in quotation marks that are exactly like the original

Summarizing and Paraphrasing

  • Things to remember:
  • When you include a summary or paraphrase, introduce the author of the work to signal to readers where your summary begins
  • At the end, give the correct documentation information
  • Do not comment or interpret; just present readers with the information the source presents and save the comments for after you document the source

Deciding When to Quote

  • Quote a well-known authority on your topic or when the words are particularly striking
  • Quote only when the original words express the exact point you want to make

Deciding When to Quote

  • When you consider quoting, ask yourself:
  • Which point of mine does this quotation illustrate?
  • Why am I considering quoting this passage?
  • Why should this particular passage be quoted rather than paraphrased?
  • What do I need to tell readers about the author of the quotation?

What to Cite

  • Cite all facts, statistics, and pieces of information unless they are common knowledge and are accessible in many sources
  • Cite exact words from your source enclosed in quotation marks
  • Cite somebody else’s ideas and opinions, even if you restate them in your own words in a summary or paraphrase

What is documentation?

  • Documentation is simply providing readers with exact details about where to find the source or the quotation
  • Documentation must occur to avoid plagiarism
  • Readers are far more likely to treat your claim seriously and heed your argument if you show that you can support it with documented evidence

MLA Guidelines: In-Text Citations

  • All quotes should be integrated: introduced and explained before presenting the quote
  • Ex: Armstrong calls Glaser “the best friend that I ever had” (qtd. in Jones and Chilton 16).
  • The phrase Armstrong calls Glaser is the introduction for the quote
  • All quotes should be enclosed in quotation marks

MLA Guidelines: In-Text Citations

  • All quotes, paraphrases, and summaries should be documented
  • Ex: According to John Smith, a doctor of psychology at Yale University, the REM cycle of sleep is the most beneficial sleep cycle we have because we are engaged in a deep sleep (15).
  • The information in parenthesis is the documented material.
  • There are no quotation marks because this is a summary of the original text.

MLA Guidelines: In-Text Citations

  • Rules for Citing Sources
  • If you introduce the quote using the author’s name, then you only include the page number from which the quote came in parenthesis
  • Ex: Dr. Thornton claims, “All will be forgiven if you try your hardest” (16).
  • The author’s last name is not included in the citation because his name is used as part of the introduction.
  • Notice that the period goes after the citation.

MLA Guidelines: In-Text Citations

  • Rules for Citing Sources
  • If you introduce the quote without using the author’s name, then you include the author’s last name and the page number from which the quote came in parenthesis
  • Ex: Laura hopes that she will “be less freakish” (Williams 720).
  • There is no comma between the author’s last name and the page number, only a space.

MLA and Works Cited

  • Any source that you use as support in your essay must also be included on a Works Cited page

How to Set Up Works Cited

  • What to list: list only works you actually cited in the text of your paper, not works you read but did not mention
  • Format of the list:
  • Begin the list on a new numbered page after the last page of the paper.
  • Center the heading (Works Cited) without quotation marks, underlining, or a period
  • Double-space the entire list. Do not add extra space between the entries

How to Set Up Works Cited

  • Organization:
  • Do not number the entries
  • List works alphabetically by author’s last name
  • List works with no named author by the first main word of each entry (if there’s no author, list the work alphabetically according to title)

How to Set Up Works Cited

  • Indentation: indent every line after the first one-half inch (five spaces or one tab). This format is called a hanging indent
  • Capitalize all words in the titles of books and articles except the coordinating conjunctions; the articles a, an, the; and prepositions, unless any of these words begin or end a title or subtitle

How to Set Up Works Cited

  • Italicize the titles of books, journals, magazines, and newspapers
  • Note: You should always italicize, never underline
  • Refer to your MLA Handbook for other rules. Be sure you are using the most current version of MLA, which is the 8th edition

Sample Works Cited Page

Works Cited

Armstrong, Louis. Louis Armstrong: A Self-Portrait. Eakins, 1971.

Brown, Peter A. “Amadeus and Mozart: Setting the Record Straight.” The American Scholar, vol. 61, no. 1, 1992, pp. 59-72.

Miller, Paul Eduard, editor. Esquire’s Jazz Book. Smith, 1944.

“The Postman Always Knocks Twice: A New Look at the Movie.” 8 Mar. 2008, www.familylife.com/the_postman_always_knocks_twice/.

Rosselli, John. The Life of Mozart. Cambridge UP, 2000.

In-Text Citations and
Works Cited

  • Please refer to the 8th edition of the MLA Handbook for additional information about in-text citations and Works Cited pages