Why Cite?

You were probably warned in school that you could fail a class if you were caught plagiarizing or didn't cite your sources, but why is it so important?

Citing sources is part of being an ethical information user, in other words using information responsibly. Information ethics are the social rules or standards that determine how we use, create, organize, and share information.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is taking someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as your own, whether it's done intentionally or happens by mistake. In the classroom (and in the world of publishing), documenting your information sources is the only way for others to know you've been thorough and careful in researching your topic. Failing to credit your sources is plagiarism.

Direct quote plagiarism is when you take the work of another person word for word, without providing quotation marks and citing the source.

However, you don’t have to copy a direct quote to commit plagiarism. You can alter the words and phrases used in the original, but if you don’t give the original author credit, you are still committing paraphrase plagiarism. When it comes to plagiarism, it’s not only the words that matter – it’s the ideas.

Some students truly don’t know that they are doing something wrong when they paraphrase information without citing the information source. They might believe that paraphrasing the words of someone who is an expert on the topic is the best way to write an accurate paper. And because they aren’t quoting it directly, it doesn’t need quote marks or attribution, does it? While the penalties they receive might (and this is a big “might”) be less severe than someone who buys a paper online or copies and pastes big sections of material into their work, the penalties could still be substantial.

How do citations work?

The best way to avoid plagiarism is to properly cite your references. Citations serve two primary purposes:

1. They give proper attribution to the original creator of a piece of content. In that way, citations are a recognition that ideas have value. By citing the author of a work, you are giving credit to that author.
2. They strengthen your argument and make you a more convincing writer. Including citations demonstrates that you are not making up your ideas in a vacuum, because your ideas are the result of examining published information on the topic. You have done your homework, in other words, and you can back up what you say by citing experts.
   

Citations are like stars in a constellation. They connect similar sources to one another and shape the development of an idea or argument. Citations also trace the conversation around a topic as it is discussed by different researchers over time. Your readers can use your citations to look back at the original source and use the information to continue the conversation. 

Citation styles (such as APA or MLA style) provide a consistent way of providing the source information. In academic writing, you will include in-text citations and reference lists that include all of the works cited in your paper. You will need to know how to format each citation, and how to assemble the complete list according to the style your professor assigns. If you are unsure, you should ask a librarian at Grossmont College Links to an external site. about when to cite and how to cite different formats of information.