"Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him."
- Mark Twain
In the process of writing the paper you are going to use the knowledge and works of other writers and researchers. Whenever you do that, you will need to document your source
Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words states that, “plagiarism is taking the words or ideas of someone else and pass it off as one’s own”.
1. Give yourself ample time for profound research.
2. Take careful notes of sources used so that you do not forget them by time you need to include them in your bibliography.
3. Allow yourself sufficient time for revising your paper.
4. Check your professors' syllabuses. Most of them include enough information on research and writing and how to paraphrase and quote.
MLA Style – Modern Languages Association style - literature, arts, and humanities.
APA Style – American Psychological Association style - psychology, education, and other social sciences
Chicago Style – The Chicago Manual of Style - used with all subjects in the "real world" by books, magazines, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publication
Check out the Citation Tic-Tac-Toe Game and the APA and MLA Citation Game in the Library Games subject guide for a more interactive and fun way to learn how to cite your sources.