Acknowledging words, facts, or ideas from another source.

It is important to give credit to the sources you use. When you copy words and ideas that are not yours and use them without giving credit, it is called plagiarism.

You can avoid plagiarism, which is a serious offense, by giving credit to your sources. People who plagiarize may receive a failing grade or even be expelled from school.

Yes, the Works Cited page at the end of your paper is important in giving credit to the sources you used. However, it doesn’t give your reader information on what exactly you used from each source or exactly where you found the material. To do this, you must cite your sources inside your essay.

When you quote an author’s exact words. If you use an author’s exact words, you need to put them in “quotation marks.”

When you summarize facts and ideas from a source. Summarizing means taking ideas from a larger passage and condensing them into your own words.

When you paraphrase. If you use the ideas or opinions from someone else and restate them in your own words, you still need to cite the source.

If the information is well known If the information can be found in dictionaries Statistics and information that can be easily found in several sources and are not likely to vary from source to source

The most common type of credit (citation) lists the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses. If you have already named the author in the sentence, just include the page number in parentheses. In 1900, the worst hurricane in the United States history hit Galveston, Texas. “A storm surge almost two stories high broke over the city, causing 20- foot floods and more than 8,000 deaths” (Skelton 4). In Hurricane Force, Michael Miles explains that cool air draws heat and moisture from warm bodies of water to form a storm (22). Author’s last name. Page number of quoted sentence. Author is identified in the sentence... so just put the page number where the info is found inside the ().

Some sources do not list an author. In those cases, use the title of the article or book and page number. The winds of a hurricane are most violent around the eye (“Hurricane Season” 7). Some sources, like websites, do not use page numbers. In those cases, list just the author’s last name. Hurricanes in the Indian Ocean are called cyclones (Nealy). If a source does not list the author or page number, use the title. In Southeast Asia, they are called typhoons (“Big Wind”).

Brief Give only enough information to identify the source on your Works Cited page

A Works Cited page provides the reader with a complete list of every source that you make reference to in your report. This makes it easy for a reader to locate and retrieve any sources cited in your paper. Include a Works Cited page at the end of your essay. It is the last page, stapled to your paper. More details to come!

Quote Summarize Paraphrase