When you take notes and jot down ideas, be careful not to borrow exact language from your sources. Even if you half-copy the author’s sentences—either by mixing the author’s phrases with your own without using quotation marks or by plugging your synonyms into the author’s sentence structure—you are committing plagiarism, a serious academic offense. (For examples of this kind of plagiarism, sometimes referred to as patchwriting, see 54b, 59b, and 63b.)
To take notes responsibly, resist the temptation to look at the source as you take notes—except when you are quoting. Keep the source close by so that you can check for accuracy, but don’t try to put ideas in your own words with the source’s sentences in front of you. When you need to quote the exact words of a source, make sure you copy the words precisely and put quotation marks around them.
For strategies for avoiding plagiarism when using sources from the Web, see 51c. (See also the chart "Information to collect for a working bibliography" in 51a.)
using sources responsibly: Be especially careful when using copy-and-paste functions in electronic files. Some researchers plagiarize their sources because they lose track of which words came from sources and which are their own. To prevent unintentional plagiarism, put quotation marks around any source text that you copy during your research.
There are three kinds of note taking: summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. Be sure to keep track of exact page references for all three types of notes; you will need the page numbers later if you use the information in your paper.
Summarizing without plagiarizing
A summary condenses information, perhaps reducing a chapter to a short paragraph or a paragraph to a single sentence. A summary should be written in your own words; if you use phrases from the source, put them in quotation marks.
Here is a passage about marine pollution from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Web site. Following the passage is the student’s summary. (The bibliographic information is recorded in MLA style.)
original source
A question that is often posed to the NOAA Marine Debris Program (MDP) is “How much debris is actually out there?” The MDP has recognized the need for this answer as well as the growing interest and value of citizen science. To that end, the MDP is developing and testing two types of monitoring and assessment protocols: 1) rigorous scientific survey and 2) volunteer at-sea visual survey. These types of monitoring programs are necessary in order to compare marine debris, composition, abundance, distribution, movement, and impact data on national and global scales.
—NOAA Marine Debris Program. “Efforts and Activities
Related to the ‘Garbage Patches.’” Marine Debris. NOAA
Marine Debris Program, 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012.
summary
Source: NOAA Marine Debris Program. “Efforts and Activities Related to the ‘Garbage Patches.’” Marine Debris. NOAA Marine Debris Program, 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012.
Having to field citizens’ questions about the size of debris fields in Earth’s oceans, the Marine Debris Program, an arm of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is currently implementing methods to monitor and draw conclusions about our oceans’ patches of pollution (NOAA Marine Debris Program).
Paraphrasing without plagiarizing
Like a summary, a paraphrase is written in your own words; but whereas a summary reports significant information in fewer words than the source, a paraphrase retells the information in roughly the same number of words. If you retain occasional choice phrases from the source, use quotation marks so that later you will know which phrases are not your own. If you paraphrase a source, you must still cite the source.
As you read the following paraphrase of the original source (see above), notice that the language is significantly different from that in the original.
paraphrase
Source: NOAA Marine Debris Program. “Efforts and Activities Related to the ‘Garbage Patches.’” Marine Debris. NOAA Marine Debris Program, 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012.
Citizens concerned and curious about the amount, makeup, and locations of debris patches in our oceans have been pressing NOAA’s Marine Debris Program for answers. In response, the organization is preparing to implement plans and standards for expert study and nonexpert observation, both of which will yield results that will be helpful in determining the significance of the pollution problem (NOAA Marine Debris Program).
Using quotation marks to avoid plagiarizing
A quotation consists of the exact words from a source. In your notes, put all quoted material in quotation marks; do not assume that you will remember later which words, phrases, and passages you have quoted and which are your own. When you quote, be sure to copy the words of your source exactly, including punctuation and capitalization.
quotation
Source: NOAA Marine Debris Program. “Efforts and Activities Related to the ‘Garbage Patches.’” Marine Debris. NOAA Marine Debris Program, 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012.
The NOAA Marine Debris Program has noted that, as our oceans become increasingly polluted, surveillance is “necessary in order to compare marine debris, composition, abundance, distribution, movement, and impact data on national and global scales.”
Avoiding plagiarism from the Web
Understand what plagiarism is. When you use another author’s intellectual property—language, visuals, or ideas—in your own writing without giving proper credit, you commit a kind of academic theft called plagiarism.
Treat Web sources the same way you treat print sources. Any language that you find on the Web must be carefully cited, even if the material is in the public domain (which generally includes older works no longer protected by copyright law) or is publicly accessible on free sites. When you use material from Web sites sponsored by federal, state, or municipal governments (.gov sites) or by nonprofit organizations (.org sites), you must acknowledge that material, too, as intellectual property owned by those agencies.
Keep track of which words come from sources and which are your own. To prevent unintentional plagiarism when you copy and paste passages from Web sources to an electronic file, put quotation marks around any text that you have inserted into your own work. During note taking and drafting you might use a different color font or highlighting to draw attention to text taken from sources—so that material from articles, Web sites, and other sources stands out unmistakably as someone else’s words.
Avoid Web sites that bill themselves as “research services” and sell essays. When you use Web search engines to research a topic, you will often see links to sites that appear to offer legitimate writing support but that actually sell college essays. Of course, submitting a paper that you have purchased is cheating, but even using material from such a paper is considered plagiarism.
For details on avoiding plagiarism while working with sources, see 54b (MLA), 59b (APA), and 63b (Chicago).
Even in the early stages of note taking, it is important to keep in mind that in the United States written texts are considered an author’s property. (This “property” isn’t a physical object, so it is often referred to as intellectual property.) The author (or the publisher) owns the language as well as any original ideas contained in the writing, whether the source is published in print, online, or in electronic form. When you use another author’s property in your own writing, you are required to follow certain conventions for citing the material, or you risk committing plagiarism.