Citation Guide  Tags: citation style mla apa plagiarism  

The UWG Student Handbook defines plagiarism as "representing the words or ideas of another as one's own."

Some examples include, but aren't limited to:

• Quoting a book, article, or other print media without citing it
• Copying and pasting text from a website without citing it
• Copying and pasting text from an article's abstract without citing it
• Modifying text from the above sources with a thesaurus
• Using another's pictures, graphs, or other non-text media with out citing them
• Using an author's ideas without citing them
• Using another student's work and claiming it as your own
• Using work from a commercial source, such as buying a paper off the Internet

Only common knowledge does not need to be cited.  All else does.  The general rule is:

When in doubt, cite!

Plagiarism is a violation of the University of West Georgia Honor Code.  Punishments for plagiarism can range from a zero assignment grade to failing the class to eventual expulsion.  Instructors are required to report instances of plagiarism to the administration for inclusion in your permanent file.

For practice identifying plagiarism, see the Acadia University Plagiarism Tutorial.

Citations are used in the text of a paper or report to identify non-original quotes or ideas.  They tell the reader what information came from the researcher and what came from other sources.  Consider the following editted excerpt:

Girl players want to see female characters in computer games as protagonists. It is easier to identify with the game’s character if it represents one’s own sex. It is proposed that girl players need stronger female characters in computer games. Female characters are seen as a possible entry point for girls to computer games, which is considered to be a masculine medium. Girls are also disturbed by representations of stereotypical females that follow masculine fantasies. Playing with female characters as tactics means choosing only female characters to play with.

There are a number of pretty bold statements in this excerpt.  How do the authors know what girls like?  Did they talk to girl gamers, do a survey, read their minds?  How many girls did they speak to?  Why should we believe them? Now consider the real excerpt:

Research of Yasmin Kafai (Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 1999) has shown that girl players want to see female characters in computer games as protagonists. It is easier to identify with the game’s character if it represents one’s own sex. It is proposed that girl players need stronger female characters in computer games (Digital Women, 2003). Female characters are seen as a possible entry point for girls to computer games, which is considered to be a masculine medium (Grimes, 2003). Girls are also disturbed by representations of stereotypical females that follow masculine fantasies (Kerr, 2003a; Haines, 2004a). Playing with female characters as tactics means choosing only female characters to play with.

By adding in citations, we can immediately see what was the author's original analysis and what wasn't.  We can also see what articles we'd need to find in the bibliography to track down those studies for ourselves.  Best of all, if we were writing a paper on female gamers, we could use the other five articles for our own paper.

The above excerpt is from: Nakamura, Rika, and Hanna Wirman.  "Girlish Counter-Playing Tactics." Game Studies 5.1 (2005): 54 pars. 10 Jun. 2008. <http://www.gamestudies.org/0501/nakamura_wirman/> 

While in-text citations point out exactly what is and isn't the author's original work, a bibliography serves as a finding aid to future researchers.  It allows other to precisely locate where an author found their information.  Research builds on itself.  Following citations in bibliographies is an excellent way to quickly and easily supplement your own searches.

Since citations are used to aid readers in finding more information, style guides have strict rules regarding their format.  Consider the following unformatted reference:

Discover Reining In The Weather Donovan Webster June 2008 70 76

What does this citation refer to: a book, an article, a speech?  When was it published?  Who's the author: Webster Donovan or Donovan Webster? Consider the same citation with proper MLA formatting.

Webster, Donovan. "Reining In The Weather." Discover Jun 2008: 70-76.

Now anyone familiar with the MLA format can tell that this is an article published in the June 2008 issue of Discover and the author's name is Donovan Webster.

Practice MLA and APA citations here: http://support.library.ewu.edu/reference/tutorial/flash/citation.html

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