When you want to use the ideas and words of others to strengthen the points that you are making in your own writing, you must indicate this to your reader. Referencing appropriately whenever you use someone else's work to support yours.
Plagiarism is when you present someone else's work or ideas as your own, and it can be accidental or intentional. Students, academics and business people who are caught plagiarizing, face serious consequences such as failure, dismissal and legal action.
Plagiarism can be:
Watch this video from York St. John University for more information about plagiarism.
Take a look at the webpage Integrate Sources into Your Paper for more guidance.
There are two ways to help you avoid plagiarism:
Paraphrase |
Direct Quote |
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What is it | |
Take the words of another source and rewrite / restate them in your own words. |
Quote another person’s words without any change. |
When to use it | |
When you need to refer to others' ideas in the sources. It's more commonly used. Paraphrasing allows you to fit material to the context of your paper and writing style. |
Mainly for giving a definition, theory, specific term, or a powerful statement. ⚠️ Too many quotes may affect the originality of your work! |
Format in APA 7th style | |
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For short quotations (under 40 words): "Direct quotes" + Citation (indicate page number) |
Examples | |
Parenthetical citation: Effective teams can be difficult to describe because the team's specialties can differ and largely influence the performance of the teamwork (Ervin et al., 2018).
Ervin et al. (2018) noted that effective teams can be difficult to describe because the team's specialties can differ and largely influence the performance of the teamwork.
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Parenthetical citation: Effective teams can be difficult to describe because “high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along another” (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470).
Ervin et al. (2018) noted that effective teams can be difficult to describe because “high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along another” (p. 470).
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More about in-text citations in APA 7th style
These tools can help you learn paraphrasing: