Is this plagiarism or not?
No, this is common knowledge. 1. Kyoko needs to write a report on American politics.
She looks up Barack Obama on Wikipedia and discovers he is the 44th president of the United States.
She includes this information in her report but doesn’t mention Wikipedia.
____Y_2. Tam is writing a paper on a novel for his English class. Since the whole class is reading
the same book, he doesn’t need to use a citation.
It does not matter how many people use a resource, you need to cite.
___Y__3. Sugi wrote a paper for his European history class last semester and got an A on the
paper. This semester, his Political Science class is addressing some of the same issues that are in
his History paper. He checks with his professor first who agrees with Sugi, so he uses the
material from his History paper.
Answer: He still does need to cite the paper, even though He is copying from his own
essay , he still needs to cite the source since, one document was created before the other
And the second one copies the first one, which falls under plagiarism.
_Yes. They took information from the internet, and did not site their sources. 4. Ramiro,
Stephan, April, and Chris are working on a group project. Chris submits his work and
the others suspect that some of it came from the Internet, but it sounds good, so
they submit it.
_No, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if done correctly_5. Maria finds a lot of good
information for her paper on the Internet. She carefully changes the wording and
prepares a good paraphrase. She doesn’t copy anything verbatim.
B.
Directions: Decide whether the information described in each scenario will require citation
of the source (Y or N) and explain why.
___Y__1. You clearly identify the source at the beginning of a paragraph that summarizes the
author’s ideas about teenage drinking. Since readers will naturally assume all of the ideas
In the paragraph are from the source, no additional citation is necessary.
Make sure that this resource is cited in the reference list/works cited, also should reinstate where the information was from.
___N__2. In your paper on the history of aviation you state the date of the Wright brothers’
First successful flight at Kitty Hawk.
Answer: Since this is very commonly well-known fact, citation here is not necessary
N, common knowledge doesn’t need to be cited 3. In a paper on the civil rights
movement you find some general, well-known background information in an encyclopedia. It is obviously common knowledge, so you copy the
and include it in your paper.
___N__4. You ask your mother about the steps she went through in obtaining a bank loan for a new car. You include this information in your paper.
_Y_ since her story and information about her personal experienced was mentioned to
shed light on something, she becomes a source of primary research and information and
It must be cited.
__Y___5. You skim a 325-page book entitled Using the Internet
. A major theme throughout the book is that the Internet is an important technological
achievement. You include this in your paper.
_Y_ the book should be cited since its information was included in the paper.