How To Cite Sources And Avoid Plagiarism

This week I learned about how to cite and give credit to those websites and articles that we used in our research, paper, or project. Whenever you use someone's work or words from the internet or a book, you must give them the credit because that is not your words and it is not your work. You can always paraphrasing a quote or phrase from a book or site, but even though it's in your words, you still have to give the credit to those people because it is still there work that you are using even though it is your own words. If you do not give credit to those people, this is considered stealing. It is also called Plagiarism. This is a serious crime that anyone can commit. Just as stealing an item from a store or something, Plagiarism is also the same, it is just stealing words instead of items from a store. Some people around the world had been caught for plagiarizing. To avoid plagiarizing, you should first cite everything that you have used as a source for either a work for school or anything that requires research. You do not have to cite something that you know from your own common knowledge because that's already your words right there! Always put other people's words in your own words or if you are citing a quote be sure to stated what source you got it from and then put the quote that you got in quotation marks to indicate that it's the source's words and not yours. Try not to use Wikipedia because that website has many false information and anyone in the word can edit it which makes it more untrustworthy. When citing something make sure to use your school's rules of citation, some schools have different ways to cite their sources from other schools. I have to site my sources in MLA format and I use a website called easybib.com to help me cite my sources. When you go on the internet to research you will notice some websites that have different domains such as .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .net etc. some of these domains are credible such as .edu, and .gov but some of them you need to look at it more closely to see if it is credible such as .com, .org, and .net. Some things you need to look for is the date of when it was last updated and the author's or creator of the site's background information to see if he or she is an expert or a pro at what they are saying. If the date is like way past 8-12 months ago, it might not be as credible as it seems. you have to check the author's background information because they might be saying something about themselves that has nothing to do with what the article or anything on their site. Then it might not be a very good article to use as research. There are some other things you have to look out for like spelling and grammar errors, so just be careful when you are choosing your sources.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm

http://www.ivcc.edu/stylebooks/stylebook6.aspx?id=14724