Documentation
1. Doc Resp: responsibilities. What constitutes plagiarism?
1. Doc Resp: responsibilities.
Why is documentation important?
When you face a challenging writing assignment on an unfamiliar topic, you may wonder whether you should use outside sources. Your library and the internet contain a vast number of sources, which vary in purpose, method and quality. Students with good intentions who carefully document their use of these sources still become bogged down in inappropriate choices and technical jargon. Teachers want to know what you think; their job is to design exercises that lie within the abilities of the class. You are always welcome to seek extra information, but you can usually spare yourself trouble by asking your teachers in advance which sources to use and how to use them.
Whether or not your assignment requires research, you are responsible for documenting your use of the sources according to proper form. Undocumented use of others' ideas (not just others' phrasing) can put you in the embarrassing position of appearing to have intended to commit plagiarism. See the section on Documentation in Part Five.
Plagiarism is the act of presenting others' words and ideas as your own without crediting their sources. Writers are responsible for documenting all use of ideas and words that are not their own.
Documentation is the practice of providing notes and bibliographies which allow readers to trace ideas to their sources and, if interested, to learn about the subject in greater detail. It also protects the writer from any appearance of plagiarism.
There is more to avoiding plagiarism than simply being honest. Most cases of plagiarism are unintentional. They occur because writers are unaware of their duties. An honest error can leave you in an embarrassing position. It is important to know when to document sources, and when writing is plagiarized.
What must you document?
You must use documentation any time you use another writer's words or ideas, and any time you use facts which are not general knowledge. Information obtained through electronic sources such as the Internet and CD-ROMs is governed by the same rules that apply to printed sources. A writer who fails to cite electronic sources is guilty of plagiarism.
Students often have difficulty knowing what constitutes general knowledge. There are no hard and fast rules. In history, important names, dates and events are considered general knowledge, but interpretations of facts are not. You do not need to provide a note when you mention that the Civil War ended in 1865, even if you had to look up the information. However, highly specific historical facts or statistics--such as the number of casualties at Gettysburg--should be annotated. So should interpretations, as opposed to facts; an example of such an interpretation might be a particular historian's argument about the causes of the Civil War. With time and experience, you will develop a feel for what needs to be documented. Use this principle: do not document a fact (especially a name, date or number) which could be found in a dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, or your class textbook, or which your teacher mentioned in class. When in doubt, ask your teacher.
Do not document famous quotations. If you write, "The condition of minorities in America today proves that Martin Luther King's dream has not yet been realized," you do not need to track down "I have a dream" in a biography of King. You can assume that your reader will recognize such a quotation. Do not worry that a quotation might be famous; if you do not recognize it, document it. Your teacher realizes you do not recognize all famous quotations. Use your best judgment, and consult your teacher if you can. As you read more scholarly writing, your judgment will improve.
Exercise. Which of these statements would require documentation? Explain your choices. The correct answers are located below.
1. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
2. The early Pilgrim settlers' religious principles, such as freedom of conscience and the value of individual enterprise, helped to shape our capitalistic economy.
3. In the five years after the potato famine, Ireland lost a fourth of its population to death and emigration.
4. The last Hawaiian monarch was forced to abdicate the throne in 1895.
5. My neighbor is such a Scrooge that I think he must say, "Bah, humbug!" every year at Christmas.
6. One reason dreams can be so strange is explained by Sigmund Freud: "impressions from our childhood may appear in dreams, which do not seem to be at the disposal of the waking memory."
What constitutes plagiarism?
Suppose five students are writing on Homer's Odyssey, and they want to use this passage from a book by Moses Hadas called A History of Greek Literature (Columbia University Press, 1950):
The figure of Odysseus himself, who has become a symbol of restless questing, is a combination of the weary traveler making his toilsome way home and the insatiable seeker driven by a demonic urge. (24-25)
The students write the following passages in their essays. Which are plagiarized?
1. Odysseus is both a weary traveler and an insatiable seeker. Homer depicts him as a complex character.
2. Odysseus, a complex character, combines the exhausted labor of a homesick man and the unquenchable passion of a restless adventurer.
3. Moses Hadas considers Odysseus a complex character. He is both a weary traveler and an insatiable seeker.
4. Odysseus has different sides to his personality. He is both cautious and vengeful, wise and impulsive, proud and humble. Moses Hadas recognizes the complexity of Homer's hero, calling him "a combination of the weary traveler [. . .] and the insatiable seeker" (24-25).
5. Odysseus has been seen as a complex character whose travels are motivated by unquenchable passion as well as exhaustion and homesickness (Hadas 24-25).
Student 1 uses Hadas's very words ("weary traveler," "insatiable seeker") without acknowledging them. Student 2 changes the words but uses Hadas's ideas. The next example does not quite avoid plagiarism either. Since student 3 has credited Hadas only with the first idea, the reader will assume that the second sentence expresses an original thought.
Only students 4 and 5 have not committed plagiarism. Student 4 does not simply present Hadas's idea, but rather uses it to support an original interpretation. Student 5 does not use any of Hadas's phrasing, but carefully credits him as the source of the idea. Note that student 5 mentions Hadas in the parenthetical citation because Hadas's name is not mentioned in the sentence.
Students 1, 2 and 3 could have avoided plagiarism in a number of ways, including the following:
1. Odysseus is both a "weary traveler" and an "insatiable seeker" (Hadas 24-25).
2. Moses Hadas considers Odysseus a complex character who combines the exhausted labor of a homesick man and the unquenchable passion of a restless adventurer (24-25).
3. Moses Hadas points out the complexity of Odysseus, calling him both a "weary traveller" and an "insatiable seeker" (24-25).
Answers to practice questions: 2 (an interpretation), 3 (a very specific fact) and 6 (a quotation that is not well known).
2. Doc Form: documentation form. Different academic disciplines (psychology, history, science) use different forms of documentation. Upon beginning any research project that requires secondary sources, ask your teacher which form of documentation you should use. The rules listed here are not as detailed as the ones you may have to use at later stages of your education, but they include the most important rules for documenting research papers. They are based on the rules established by an organization called the MLA (Modern Language Association) for use by professional scholars in the humanities, especially English.
The easiest form of documentation is parenthetical citation. Instead of having to trouble with notes, the writer uses brief references in the text to let the reader trace the source to the bibliography. It is possible, but seldom appropriate, to use notes and parenthetical citation in the same paper.
Place the page or line number in a parenthesis after your quotation:
One obstacle to educational reform is what Gerald Graff calls the "cult of the great teacher" (114).
Place end punctuation outside the parenthesis, even if the sentence ends with a period in the source. Use no abbreviations such as p. or pp. Leave one blank space between the quotation marks and the parenthesis:
WRONG: "teacher." (114) "teacher" (p. 114) "teacher"(114). RIGHT: "teacher" (114). If it is clear from your context (as in the example above) to whom you refer, cite only the page number: (114). If you do not mention the source of information you are citing, your citation should briefly identify the source:
Half a century after India had gained independence, 52 per cent of its people were still living on incomes of less than a dollar a day (Strasser 43).
Keep citations brief, with the minimum of information that would allow a reader to find the source in your bibliography. If you must include the author's name in the citation, usually the last name is enough. Use no comma or abbreviation:
WRONG: (Strasser, 43). WRONG: (Strasser, p. 43). RIGHT: (Strasser 43). If your bibliography includes more than one source by the same author, write the author's name, a comma, the title (or a short version of the title), and the page number. Put a comma after the author's name but not after the title:
In 1850 there were only eight graduate students in the United States (Graff, Professing Literature 26).
Foregrounding sources. Indicate in your sentence when and how you are using a secondary source. Do not just drop in a quotation or statistic without explanation; introduce the information smoothly and grammatically into a sentence of your own that shows its importance in your argument. More information is listed in QL (Quoting Literature), sections 7-9.
Keep the sources in the foreground. Do not force your reader to guess how you have used them. Especially if you are citing an interpretation or a judgment, name the source in your sentence:
SOURCE HIDDEN IN BACKGROUND: Hamlet is a controversial play: "So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure" (Eliot 178).
BETTER: Hamlet is a controversial play. At one extreme is T. S. Eliot's opinion: "So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure" (178).
If you are citing statistics or other factual information, it is less important to name the source in your sentence. If the identity of the source is significant, you can introduce information with a phrase like "A recent Consumer Reports study showed. . . ."
Maintain an objective tone, even if you disagree strongly with one of the sources you cite. Concentrate on the ideas, not the person who expresses them:
INAPPROPRIATE: Eliot wrote a narrow-minded essay to put down Hamlet.
BETTER: Eliot's judgment is based on a questionable standard of artistic success.