How to Avoid Plagiarism!! …And Lots of Other Things You’re Just Dying to Know

1. How to Avoid Plagiarism!! …And Lots of Other Things You’re Just Dying to Know

2. Rule #1: You must give credit to the person or source from which you borrowed an idea or directly copied a passage. If you don’t, you’re committing intellectual THEFT!!

3. Rule #2: Your Works Cited page determines what goes in parentheses. That’s so your reader can look at the Works Cited page, quickly find your alphabetized entries, and get all the publication information he needs.

4. Rule #3: The period ALWAYS goes AFTER the parenthetical documentation, unless it’s a long quote. Then, the period goes before the parenthetical documentation. Example:Santa Claus proclaims that “The twelve days of Christmas are a joke” (“Zebras Unveiled” 12).

5. Rule #4: Do NOT put a comma, the word “page,” an abbreviation for “page,” or anything else between the last name and the page number. If no page number is available, simply put the LAST name in parentheses. Note: If you have two titles by the same author, place the last name in parentheses, followed by a comma, the title of the work, and page number(s). Ex. (Smellypants, I Love Skunks 23).

6. Rule #5: If your Works Cited entry has no author’s name, shorten the title of the article, web site, etc., and place it in parentheses. Whatever words/names you used to alphabetize your Works Cited page are the words/names you use for your parenthetical documentation. Or, more simply, the word or words that come first in your Works Cited entry are the word or words that go in your documentation. Remember: Don’t count articles like “the,” “a,” or “an” when alphabetizing your entries AND when documenting sources.

7. Rule #6: If you refer to the title of the work and/or author in your lead-in to the quoted material, you don’t need to include it in your parenthetical documentation. Just put the page number. See example under “Long Quotes” below.

8. Okay, let’s pretend you’re using the following information in your research paper. Try your hand at parenthetical documentation using the Works Cited entries I give you from our class example.

9. Example: One interesting story states that “in May 2000, a save-the-whales activist was forced to call off his sailing voyage across the Pacific Ocean, which he had hoped would call attention to his cause. The reason was that his 60-foot boat was damaged by two passing whales” (Cameron 2-3).

10. Example: Another interesting event occurred “in June of 2000, when an 87-year-old man dropped dead while standing in line at a government office in Bogotá, Colombia. His reason for visiting the office was to apply for a government certificate to prove he was still alive” (“Sleepyhead”).

11. Poison oak is not an oak, and poison ivy is not an ivy. Both are members of the cashew family.

12. Found in “Marrying Monkeys” on page 15.

13. However, it is extremely interesting to note that “Poison oak is not an oak and poison ivy is not an ivy. Both are members of the cashew family” (“Marrying Monkeys” 15).

14. Harold is a strange young man, rich, spoiled, and fascinated with the concept of death.

15. Found in James Cameron’s writing.

16. In his analysis of Harold and Maude, James Cameron notes that “Harold is a strange young man, rich, spoiled, and fascinated with the concept of death” (33).

17. Trepanation, also known as drilling holes in your head, is believed to be the oldest surgical practice in history.

18. Found in the piece by Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro Gonzalez.

19. One ancient practice, which seems rather barbaric, is “Trepanation, also known as drilling holes in your head, [and it] is believed to be the oldest surgical practice in history” (Dynamite and Gonzalez 345).

20. “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

21. In “Love Affairs of Crocodiles,” George Bush is quoted as saying this.

22. George Bush, in one of his brilliant speeches on the environment, stated, “ ‘I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully’ ” (Wise 75-76).

23. The Wok began as a Bronze Age Mongolian helmet that doubled as a cooking pan.

24. Found in Why Do You Hate Skunks?

25. People who enjoy stir-fry cooking may be shocked to discover that “The Wok began as a Bronze Age Mongolian helmet that doubled as a cooking pan” (Smellypants, Why Do You Hate Skunks? 112).

26. Quotes within Quotes Thirty percent of Americans avoid public restrooms, citing “fear of germs” as the primary reason.

27. A recent study found that “Thirty percent of Americans avoid public restrooms, citing ‘fear of germs’ as the primary reason” (Smith 122, 146).

28. Francis Scott Key, author of the United States’ national anthem and the words, “O’er the land of the free,” was a slave owner.

29. One of the horrors in American history is that “Francis Scott Key, author of the United States’ national anthem and the words, ‘O’er the land of the free,’ was a slave owner” (Jones 33).

30. Alteration of Sources: The Ellipsis… A Tampa, Florida, burglar who decided to rob a 24-hour convenience store didn’t know the store was open 24 hours. He cut a hole in the roof, and then fell through onto the coffee pot just as a police officer was buying some coffee.

31. One burglar's luck ran out when he “decided to rob a 24-hour…store [and] didn’t know [it] was open 24 hours. He… then fell through onto the coffee pot as a police officer was buying coffee” (“Zebras Unveiled”).

32. Perhaps one of the most unfortunate crooks was a man “who decided to rob a 24-hour convenience store [but] didn’t know the store was open 24 hours. He cut a hole in the roof, and then fell through…just as a police officer was buying some coffee” (Smith 17).

33. Alteration of Sources: The Brackets [ ] The blast was heard all the way to Canada. The energy released was equal to 27,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs dropped at the rate of one per second for nine hours. (Referring to the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980)

34. Scientists report that “The blast [of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens] was heard all the way to Canada. The energy [the volcano] released was equal to 27,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs dropped at the rate of one per second for nine hours” (CBS News).

35. Long Quotes If a quote runs to more than four lines in your paper, set it off from your text beginning a new line, indenting one inch (2 tabs) from the left margin, and typing it double-spaced, without any quotation marks. A colon generally sets up the quote. Parenthetical documentation follows the last line of the quotation. The period comes before the documentation. This is an exception to Rule #3.

36. Example: At the conclusion of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Ralph and the other boys realize the horror of their actions: The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. (186) And then the rest of your text goes back to the original left margin. Neato, huh? And you just keep writing your little research paper and thinking to yourself, “Wow! I could be swinging in a hammock on some Hawaiian island right now!” See? That’s what the long quote thing looks like.

37. Okay, now it’s your turn. Here’s a long quote for you: A person with short thumbs is stubborn; a person with long thumbs has a strong sense of purpose. Straight thumbs indicate generosity; crooked thumbs indicate selfishness. If your thumbs are hairy, but the rest of your fingers aren’t, you’re a genius. If all of your fingers are hairy, you’re bad-tempered.

38. According to Robert Smellypants in I Love Skunks, scholars who have noticed a relationship between a person’s hands and his or her personality have observed: A person with short thumbs is stubborn; a person with long thumbs has a strong sense of purpose. Straight thumbs indicate generosity; crooked thumbs indicate selfishness. If your thumbs are hairy, but the rest of your fingers aren’t, you’re a genius. If all of your fingers are hairy, you’re bad-tempered. (34) Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

39. While some serial killers rely on violence and the element of surprise to trap their victims, others, like Ted Bundy, use a much more sinister means of attack: their charisma.In his book Serial Killers, Tom Smith claims that when the alluring Ted Bundy kidnapped two ladies from the crowded recreation area of Lake Sammamish, his killing reached its climax in a truly heinous way. Rather than brute force, Bundy manipulated his victims with his dashing magnetism and smooth cunning, a technique that obviously worked well, since he was able to swipe and kill two girls in one day. Furthermore, his bold arrogance was quite obvious in his actually telling people his real name (194),disbelieving that he could possibly be caught.Even more lethal than a savage who uses force to destroy his victims is a wicked beast like Bundy who uses enchanting deception and the façade of good looks as his tools of destruction.