Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

As you take notes, avoid unintentional plagiarism
Managing information; taking notes responsibly
Research

Plagiarism, using someone’s words or ideas without giving credit, is often accidental. After spending so much time thinking through your topic and reading sources, it’s easy to forget where a helpful idea came from or that the idea wasn’t yours to begin with. Even if you half-copy an author’s sentences — either by mixing the author’s phrases with your own without using quotation marks or by plugging your synonyms into an author’s sentence structure — you are plagiarizing.

To take notes responsibly, make sure you grasp the ideas in the source. Circle words or terms that you don’t understand and look them up. Ask these questions: What is the meaning of the source? What is the argument? What is the evidence? Then, 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 a source, make sure you copy the words exactly and put quotation marks around them.

Summarizing or paraphrasing ideas and quoting exact language are three ways of taking notes without unintentionally plagiarizing. See 4c for how to write a summary and 56a for how to paraphrase. Also see section 56 for when to summarize, paraphrase, or quote.

Below is a passage from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website that Aisha, a student writer, came across while researching marine pollution. Following the passage are Aisha’s annotations — in other words, notes and questions that help her figure out meaning — and then examples of a summary, a paraphrase, and a quotation she could use to refer to the original source.

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, 2012, pm22100.net/docs/pdf/enercoop/pollutions/noaa-plastiques.pdf

SUMMARY

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).

PARAPHRASE

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).

QUOTATION

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.”

NOTE: Because the source is from an unpaginated website, the in-text citation includes only the author’s name placed either in parentheses (as in the first two examples above) or in a signal phrase (as in the third example).

In a second pass through the source, the student would engage more with the ideas and start to plan next steps for her research. The student might write annotations such as these:

✵ Find out what kind of debris is most harmful

✵ Seems like a good idea to get citizens involved — marine debris is vast

✵ Quote these words from source to show why surveillance is necessary

HOW TO

Avoid plagiarizing from the web

1. 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 engage in a kind of academic dishonesty called plagiarism.

2. Treat online sources as someone else’s intellectual property. Language, data, or images that you find on the web must be cited, even if the material is publicly accessible on free sites or social media, is on a government website, or is in the public domain (which includes older works no longer protected by copyright law).

3. Keep track of words and ideas borrowed from sources. When you copy and paste passages from online sources, put quotation marks around any text that you have copied. Develop a system for distinguishing your words and ideas from anything you’ve summarized, paraphrased, or quoted.

4. Create a complete bibliographic entry for each source to keep track of publication information. From the start of your research project, maintain accurate records for all online sources you read, listen to, or view.

HOW TO

Take notes responsibly

1. Understand the ideas in the source. Start by determining the purpose and meaning of the source. Focus on the overall ideas in the source. Ask: What is the argument? What is the evidence?

2. Keep the source close by to check for accuracy, but resist the temptation to look at the source as you take notes — except when you are quoting.

3. Use quotation marks around any borrowed words or phrases. Copy the borrowed words exactly and keep complete bibliographic information for each source.

4. Develop an organized system to distinguish your insights and ideas from those of the source. Take time to note how you might use a source and what it will contribute to answering your research question.

5. Create a method to label and identify when you have summarized a text or its data or paraphrased or quoted an author’s words.

6. Record complete bibliographic information for each source so you can give credit to the source, cite it accurately, and find it again easily.