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Plagiarism: Don't let it happen to you!

Example

ORIGINAL PASSAGE:

Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed., 1976, pp. 46-47.

LEGITIMATE PARAPHRASE:

In research papers, students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).

ACCEPTABLE SUMMARY:

Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).

Note that the example in this section uses MLA style for in-text citation.

References

Purdue University (n.d). Paraphrase: Write it in your own words. Purdue Owl. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/quoting_paraphrasing_and_summarizing/paraphrasing.html

Ryan, E. (2022, July 4). Synthesizing sources: Examples & synthesis matrix. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/synthesizing-sources/