APA

1. Plagiarism 1
Plagiarism and
Correct Documentation
by
Karey Perkins

2. Plagiarism 2
What is “plagiarism”?
It is presenting other’s work, words, or ideas as
your own, or documenting such work incorrectly,
whether intentional or not intentional.
There are four kinds or levels of plagiarism:
 Cheating or Stealing
 Lying and Falsifying
 Plagiarism due to Laziness, Confusion, Carelessness
 Inadvertent Plagiarism

3. Plagiarism 3 Author’s unique ideas (must cite)
vs.
Common knowledge (don’t cite)
Author’s unique ideas (must cite)
 Information that the author has
researched herself
 Information that the author has
discovered (his own
experiments, etc.) himself
 Thoughts, insights, opinions,
and ideas of the author that
are original to that author
 Author’s own synthesis of
other’s information or own
conclusions from other’s
information
Common knowledge (don’t cite)
 Information that appears in
multiple sources
 Information that most educated
people know, though they may
have to remind themselves by
checking a reference book
 You may not already know the
information before you find it in
your source, but if it conforms
to one of the above criteria, it is
still common knowledge

4. Plagiarism 4
Pop Quiz 1: Which statements below are common
knowledge? Why or why not?
1. Sugar causes tooth decay in children and adults.
2. The earth is 93.2 million miles from the sun.
3. It seems that the majority of people find their solutions to problems or
puzzles not through labored and sequential logical calculations, but
through an “aha! experience”.
4. Universal grammatical rules do not originate in any brain location or
through a genetic determination, but rather, they emerge spontaneously
and evolve through adaptation.
5. Elephants are mammals of the pachyderm family of the Proboscidea
order, and only three living species remain.

5. Plagiarism 5
Transferring information from
your source to your paper
When you put another’s work, words, or ideas within
the text of your paper, you may
QUOTE
PARAPHRASE
SUMMARIZE

6. Plagiarism 6
QUOTES
 Convey your author’s ideas in the AUTHOR’S words, not your
own words.
 ALL word-for-word interpretations MUST BE IN QUOTATION
MARKS. (“ ”)
 In in-text citations for quotes, you need page numbers in addition
to author and year: (Smith, 1999, p. 45).

7. Plagiarism 7 Quote the author EXACTLY
 Quote EXACTLY (word-for-word, punctuation for punctuation).
 If you subtract unnecessary words, use an ellipses (3 dots) (…) Have
a period after the ellipses if it is at end of sentence (4 dots) (….)
“He [President Bush] cited numerous reasons for a troop surge….
Chief
among them was the need to ‘win’ in Iraq” (Jones, 2007, p. A1).

8. Plagiarism 8
WHEN to quote
 quote sparingly, usually no more than 10-15% of your
citations
 quote if author has said something
 Uniquely worded
 Technical and difficult to translate
 Something you will object to or refute
 Speaker is famous or has special authority
 don’t begin or end paragraph with a quote

9. Plagiarism 9
PARAPHRASES
 convey your author’s ideas in YOUR own words, not his
 keep the same amount of information and detail – the
passage in your paper should be same length and text space
as the passage in your source
 do not skip points
 do not insert your own ideas
 only after you cite the paraphrase will you then add
your comments

10. Plagiarism 10
SUMMARIES
Same as paraphrase: completely in your own words EXCEPT
 condense the author’s message
 convey author’s ideas in shorter form, with less detail
 just convey the major concepts
 sum up author’s main points

11. Plagiarism 11
Formatting in-text citations
 Citations give credit to your source IN THE MIDDLE OF
YOUR PAPER.
 They go immediately AFTER the information from your
source that you used.
 They go BEFORE the punctuation (usually a period,
sometimes a semi-colon or comma).
 They ALWAYS have a corresponding References page
(bibliography) entry.
 Basic APA style has the following: parenthesis, author’s
last name, comma, year, close parenthesis, period or
comma or semicolon, as in:
Blah, blah, blah (Williams, 2003).

12. Plagiarism 12
In-text citation for a PARAPHRASE
Blah, blah, blah (Author’s last name, year).
Example:
Global warming is increasing the earth’s
temperature by an average of 1 degree every
500 years (Smith, 1999).

13. Plagiarism 13
In-text citation for a QUOTE
The PAGE NUMBER is required for direct quotations
only.
“Blah, blah, blah” (Author’s last name, year, p. #).
Example:
Some scientists believe that “without aggressive
intervention in systems of present energy use, the
beaches of Florida will be underwater by the year 2500”
(Smith, 1999, p. 54).

14. Plagiarism 14
Review of basic APA in-text citation
In-text citation of a PARAPHRASE:
Blah, blah, blah (Smith, 2006).
In-text citation of a QUOTE:
“Blah, blah, blah” (Smith, 2006, p. 45).
Alternate in-text citation placement for a PARAPHRASE:
Smith (2006) believes yadda, yadda, yadda.
Alternate in-text citation placement for a QUOTE:
According to Smith (2006), “Yadda, yadda, yadda” (p. 45).

15. Plagiarism 15 In-text Citation of Internet Sources
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,
NEVER use the Internet web address
(http://www.etc.etc.com)
in your in-text citation!!!!!!!**

16. Plagiarism 16
Citing Internet Sources
PARAPHRASES
 The Internet source will often have an AUTHOR, (so use
author’s name as in your other sources):
Blah, blah, blah (Taylor, 2007).
 If your Internet source doesn’t have an author, use a
SHORTENED TITLE of the web source (the page, not the
whole site):
Blah, blah, blah (“Women’s Health,” 2007).

17. Plagiarism 17
Citing Internet Sources
QUOTES
There is ONE difference between in-text citations of Internet
sources and print sources:
If you QUOTE an Internet source, use PARAGRAPH
numbers (yes, you must count them), not page
numbers:
“Blah, blah, blah” (Taylor, 2007, para. 6).

18. Plagiarism 18
Formatting the Title Page: Example
New Computer Users 1
RUNNING HEAD: New Computer Users
New Computer Users and Fear:
A Review of Some Related Literature
Samantha Smith
Psychology 101, Semester 2, Class 3A
Professor H. Lawson
May 2, 2006
FROM: Shaun Fawcett’s Writing Help Central. Retrieved March 5, 2007 from http://www.writinghelp-central.com/apa-sample1.html

19. Plagiarism 19
THE REFERENCES PAGE
Now that you know how to format your in-text
citations and your paper in general, let’s look
at how to write your bibliography, the list of all
your sources at the END of your paper. In
APA style it is called:
REFERENCES

20. Plagiarism 20
The References Page (your bibliography)
 A References page is REQUIRED or you will receive a zero
on your paper.
 That doesn’t mean you don’t have to have IN-TEXT
CITATIONS – they are also REQUIRED or you will still
receive a zero.
 EACH IN-TEXT CITATION must have a corresponding or
matching REFERENCES PAGE ENTRY.
 List ALL sources you used (“referred” to) when you wrote
your paper.
 Compile the list as you go, not at the end of your project.
 Use APA format at DeVry (discussed below).

21. Plagiarism 21
Formatting the References Page
 Put all entries in ALPHABETICAL ORDER by author’s last name or
shortened title if no author.
 The word “References” goes at top of first reference page.
References
Bedford, F. (1990, October 30). The psychology of fear: Is it all in our heads?
The New York Times, p. B4.
Chrissie, S. (1995, July 31). Are we afraid of our computers? The Chicago
Tribune, pp. D4, D6.
Gorman, J.R., & Smithson, R.T. (1997). The dynamics of human fear
neuroses in the age of the modern computer (pp. 345-353). Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.

22. Plagiarism 22
Titles
 Underline OR Italicize titles of LONG WORKS
 Quote titles of SHORT WORKS
 What is a short work? What is a long work?

23. Plagiarism 23
When to Underline, Italicize, or Quote Titles
UNDERLINE or ITALICIZE
titles of Long Works:
 Books
 Plays
 Movies
 Newspapers
 Magazines or journals
 TV shows
QUOTE titles of “Short Works”:
 A poem, essay, or selection
from a book
 An article in a newspaper
 An article in a magazine
 An episode of a TV show

24. Plagiarism 24
References page entry for a BOOK
For a book with one author:
Author’s last name, first initial. (Date).
Title of book. City Published: Publisher.
Didion, J. (1997). A book of common prayer.
New York: Simon & Schuster.

25. Plagiarism 25
References page entry for a
NEWSPAPER or MAGAZINE ARTICLE
For a newspaper article:
Broad, W. J. (1999, November 21). Nuclear roulette
for Russia: Burying uncontained waste. The New
York Times, p. A1.
For a magazine article:
Winson, J. (2002, June). The meaning of dreams.
Scientific American, 12, 54-61.

26. References page entries for Plagiarism 26
INTERNET SOURCES
 With the web, you try to approximate as print citations as closely as you can.
 Try to find an author, an article title, the magazine or main site from which it
comes from. You may have to search around the site.
 At the end of the entry, you have the DATE OF RETRIEVAL, or when YOU
accessed the web page and found the information. Therefore, you will have TWO
dates in your entry.
 You also will have the FULL WEB ADDRESS, of the web page or file.
 So, you have an entry that looks just like a regular print entry, followed by:
Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://kareyperkins.com/classes/112/112links.html

27. Plagiarism 27
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention.
New York: HarperPerennial.
Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species: The Co-evolution of language and the brain. New
York: Norton.
Degelman, Douglas. (2006). APA Style Essentials. Retrieved March 6, 2007 from:
http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/
DeVry/Alpharetta COLL 147/149 Resource Notebook. (2004). General Education Department.
Alpharetta, GA: DeVry University.
Fawcett, Shaun. (2007). Writing Help Central. Retrieved March 2, 5, 2007 from
http://www.writinghelp-central.com
Glenn, C., Miller, R.K., Webb, S.S., and Gray, L. (2004). The Writer’s Harbrace Handbook, 2nd ed.
Boston: Thomson.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.
Troyka, L. Q. (2002). Simon & Schuster handbook for writers, 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.