Part Four: Writing and Citing

Writing Fundamentals

There are many resources that can help you will the process of writing. The library has books about writing papers and speeches. They can guide you in the process of writing and organizing your paper.

There are tons of web sites with tips and links to guides for common assignments like annotated bibliographies, critical essays, speeches and more. Other libraries and university web sites can be good resources.

Writing Fundamentals

• Start early. Academic writing usually takes longer than writing a paper in high school.
• Read through your articles, web sites and other sources of research.
• Use your research question to guide your writing. Make sure you support your main point or thesis. Make an outline before you start writing.
• Use specific examples, evidence, quotations from books and articles to make your arguments.
• If you are having writer's block, try to focus on getting your idea's down in rough format.
• Set your assignment aside for at least a day before revising. You will have a fresh perspective.
• Read aloud to catch errors. Proofread more than once. Show your draft to a TA or skilled friend for proofreading.

What is Plagiarism?

Every year students knowingly and unknowingly commit plagiarism. Plagiarism is...

• Copying someone else's words without using quotation marks and citing the source.
• Restating or summarizing someone else's original or specialized ideas without citing the source.
• Pretending someone else's work is your own.

CSULB defines plagiarism as "the act of using the ideas or work of another person or persons as if they were one's own, without giving credit to the source." Check out CSULB's Plagiarism Policy and Penalties.

Remember: You do not have to cite things considered common knowledge. For example, “ President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963,” is a fact and thus you do not need to cite the source.

How Do I Avoid Plagiarism?

The easiest way to avoid plagiarism is to give credit to other people's ideas as you use them. Doing academic writing is ALL about using and building upon others’ research, but you have to give credit to their ideas and words. It adds credibility to your work by demonstrating your knowledge and research skills.

Professors have many tools which help them detect plagiarism. First, your professor "knows" the body of research you are using and will know if you are using it correctly or incorrectly. Second, your professor may require the use of Turnitin. Turnitin is a software program that checks your paper against thousands of other student's papers looking for matches which may indicate plagiarism.

Did you know… Copyright was created to protect every person's intellectual property--even yours. When you write something, the protection of copyright ensures that you will profit from your original creation.

Style Manuals

The first step to citing is to choose a style manual. Did your professor tell you which style manual to use? Look at your assignment or syllabus. If not, be sure to ask what style they prefer. The most common style manuals and those we will focus on in SURF are:

• Modern Language Association (MLA) is used in arts and humanities
• American Psychological Association (APA) is used in psychology and social sciences

Other styles are Chicago Manual of Style used in social science, humanities, and sciences; Turabian used for humanities; and Council of Biology Editors (CBE ) is used in the natural sciences.

These guides (available at the library) will help answer formatting questions such as margins, in-text citations and how to create your “Works Cited” page or Bibliography. Let's learn exactly how to cite books, articles, web sites and more...

Quoting

A direct quote is when you take the original text of the article and put quotation marks (" ") around it. It is good to use a quote when the author's language is noteworthy for some reason, difficult to rephrase or you want to analyze the section in detail.

Remember: When you use a direct quote, you must include your own analysis. Think of it as a 50/50 rule. If you use a direct quote that is fifty words long, you should write about fifty words of your own that include commentary about or reaction to the quotation.

Examples of ways to insert a quotation into Mizael's Paper:

Quote a single word or phrase:
Taylor (2004) writes that college students "may not see the negative consequences associated with their actions because they have never experienced the real business world (p. 310).”

Quote a longer phrase:
Parker (1998) contends , " The impact of advertising on consumer attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward alcohol and other products is complex and not fully understood. Much of the relevant research to date has approached the relationship from an information-processing viewpoint; that is, that advertising is seen as providing information about products, which people then incorporate in making purchasing decisions (p. 98)."

Each of these quotes also has a complete citation on the Works Cited page.

Taylor, Susan. (2004). Music Piracy--Differences in the Ethical Perceptions of Business Majors and Business Music Majors. Journal of Education for Business. 79(5), 306-310.

Parker, Betty. (1998). Exploring Life Themes and Myths in Alcohol Advertisements through a Meaning-Based Model of Advertising Experience. Journal of Advertising. 27(1), 97-113.

Summarizing and Paraphrasing

In academic writing, summarizing and paraphrasing are additional techniques used to incorporate others’ concepts into your paper. A summary is a concise version of the original text in your own words. Summaries include the most important idea, but omit some details. A paraphrase does not condense the original text but instead you restate all of the details in your own words.

Summaries and paraphrases are set off by certain phrases such as, according to Smith... or Jones concludes that..., to inform the reader that you are summarizing or paraphrasing. Be sure that your opinions are clearly distinguished from the summary or paraphrase.

One technique is to read a section, lay it aside for awhile, and then write down your memory of the section in your own words. Include an in-text citation [i.e. (Smith 2001)] to indicate where the passage you summarized or paraphrased begins and ends. For example:

Original Text:
"These findings suggest that, although college-age respondents rated the Public Service Announcements in this study to be more realistic than the ads they viewed, they nevertheless questioned the level of realism and relevance portrayed in the PSAs. One reason that the quantitative evaluation of realism was higher in the PSAs than in advertisements was the content of the ads themselves, two of which showed dogs ruling humans with beer." (p. 138)

Summary:
College students, in a study by Adnsager (2001), found public service announcements (PSA's) to be more realistic than the alcohol ads they viewed. This may be because two of the ads they saw were not realistic with dogs ruling humans with beer.

The summary will have a complete citation in the Works Cited Page. Here is the citation using the MLA style:

Andsager, Julie; Austin Erica W.; and Bruce E. Pinkleton (2001). "Questioning the Value of Realism; Young Adults' Processing of Messages in Alcohol-related public Service Announcements and Advertising." Journal of Communication. 51.1 (2001): 121-142.

Your “Works Cited” page (also called a Bibliography or Reference List) goes on a separate page at the end of your paper. It is important that the citations are formatted consistently and accurately. The citations must include all of the information a reader (or your professor) needs to track down the books, articles or web sites you used.

Bibliography Tools

There are now tools that can help you with creating citations:

Citation Generators
To use a Citation Generator, just type in your citation information and the generator will put everything in the correct order with punctuation. Citation Generators do not work for all types of materials. For example, if you have an e-mail, interview, map, video, etc. you will need to cite these items individually using a style manual. Always double check the output, as the computer can make mistakes.


Bibliographic Software i.e. RefWorks
There are also software programs (such as RefWorks, Endnote, etc.) that you can use to download citation information directly from databases. These programs then create a bibliography. Most of these programs are not efficient for 2-5 page papers but many thesis students, scholarly researchers and many of your professors use such programs (learn more about RefWorks at CSULB).