Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use of facts, opinions, and language taken from another writer without acknowledge. Far more common is plagiarism in dribs and drabs: a sentence here and there, a paragraph here and there.
Changing a few words or phrases from another writer's work is not enough to make the writing "your own." The writing is either your own or the other person's writing, and there are no in betweens.
Documentation acknowledges that the fact or opinion expressed comes from another writer. If the language comes from another writer, quotation marks are necessary in addition to documentation.
Original Passage
In 1925 Dreiser produced his masterpiece, the massively impressive An American Tragedy. By this time-thanks largely to the tireless propagandizing on his behalf by the influential maverick critic H. L. Mencken and by others concerned with a realistic approach to the problems of American life-Dreiser's fame had become secure. He was seen as the most powerful and effective destroyer of the genteel tradition that had dominated popular American fiction in the post-Civil War period, spreading its soft blanket of provincial, sentimental romance over the often ugly realities of life in modern, industrialization, urban America. Certainly there was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as a man or a novelist. He was the supreme poet of the squalid, a man who felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying the American dream. With an eye at once ruthless and compassionate, he saw the tragedy inherent in the American success ethic; the soft underbelly, as it were, of the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches myth so appealing to the optimistic American imagination.
Richard Freedman, The Novel (New York: Newsweek Books, 1975), 104-105.
Plagiarism is the use of facts, opinions, and language taken from another writer without acknowledge. Far more common is plagiarism in dribs and drabs: a sentence here and there, a paragraph here and there.
Changing a few words or phrases from another writer's work is not enough to make the writing "your own." The writing is either your own or the other person's writing, and there are no in betweens.
Documentation acknowledges that the fact or opinion expressed comes from another writer. If the language comes from another writer, quotation marks are necessary in addition to documentation.
Original Passage
In 1925 Dreiser produced his masterpiece, the massively impressive An American Tragedy. By this time-thanks largely to the tireless propagandizing on his behalf by the influential maverick critic H. L. Mencken and by others concerned with a realistic approach to the problems of American life-Dreiser's fame had become secure. He was seen as the most powerful and effective destroyer of the genteel tradition that had dominated popular American fiction in the post-Civil War period, spreading its soft blanket of provincial, sentimental romance over the often ugly realities of life in modern, industrialization, urban America. Certainly there was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as a man or a novelist. He was the supreme poet of the squalid, a man who felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying the American dream. With an eye at once ruthless and compassionate, he saw the tragedy inherent in the American success ethic; the soft underbelly, as it were, of the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches myth so appealing to the optimistic American imagination.
Richard Freedman, The Novel (New York: Newsweek Books, 1975), 104-105.
Student VersionThere was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as man or novelist. He was the supreme poet of the squalid, a man who felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying American dream.
There was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as a man or novelist. He was the supreme poet of the squalid, a man who felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying the American dream (Freedman 104). Nothing was genteel about Dreiser as a man or a novelist. He was the poet of the squalid and felt that terror, pity, and beauty lurked under the American dream. By 1925, Dreiser's reputation was firmly established. The reading public viewed Drieser as one of the main contributors to the downfall of the "genteel tradition" in American literature. Dreiser, "the supreme poet of the squalid," looked beneath the bright surface of American life and values and described the frightening and tragic elements the "ugly realities" so often overlooked by other writers (Freedman 104). |
CommentObvious plagiarism: Word-for-word repetition without acknowledgment.
Still plagiarism. The documentation alone does not help. The language is the original authors and only quotation marks around the whole passage plus documentation would be correct. Still plagiarism - A few words have been changed or omitted, but by no stretch of the imagination is the student writer using his own language. Correct. The student writer uses his own words to summarize most of the original passage. The documentation shows that the ideas expressed come from the original writer, not from the student. The few phrases kept from the original passage are carefully enclosed in quotation marks. |
Document your sources.
Whenever you use information from one of your sources-whether it is quoted directly or paraphrased, you will need to credit the source of the information in your paper. One method of doing this is by using parenthetical documentation (footnotes in parentheses). In most cases you will list only the author's last name and a page reference in parentheses after the paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material. Keep the following guidelines in mind.
Guidelines for Paranthetical Documentation
- Works by one author Give the author's last name in parentheses at
the end of a sentence or quote, followed by the page numbers (Jones 58-
60). If you mention the author's name in the sentence preceeding the
quote, you need only the page number of the work (58-60).
- Works by more than one author List all the last names in parentheses,
or give one last name followed by et al. (Smith, Jones, and Wilcox 87) or
(Smith et al. 87).
- Works with no author listed When citing an article that does not identify
the author, use the title of the work or a shortened version of it ("Civil War
Memoirs" 398).
- Two works by the same author If you use more than one work by the
same author, give the title, or a shortened version, after the author's last
name (Jones. War Novels 398).
- Two works cited at the same place If you use more than one source to
support a point, use a semicolon to separate the entries (Jones 398; Smith
87).
Guidelines for Paranthetical Documentation
- Works by one author Give the author's last name in parentheses at
the end of a sentence or quote, followed by the page numbers (Jones 58-
60). If you mention the author's name in the sentence preceeding the
quote, you need only the page number of the work (58-60).
- Works by more than one author List all the last names in parentheses,
or give one last name followed by et al. (Smith, Jones, and Wilcox 87) or
(Smith et al. 87).
- Works with no author listed When citing an article that does not identify
the author, use the title of the work or a shortened version of it ("Civil War
Memoirs" 398).
- Two works by the same author If you use more than one work by the
same author, give the title, or a shortened version, after the author's last
name (Jones. War Novels 398).
- Two works cited at the same place If you use more than one source to
support a point, use a semicolon to separate the entries (Jones 398; Smith
87).