This document provides an introduction to citation and plagiarism for an English course. It defines citation as referencing sources quoted in academic work and explains that citations and a works cited list are used to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is failing to properly cite direct quotations, borrowed ideas, or summarized or paraphrased sources. The document demonstrates proper MLA citation format within text and in a works cited list for different source types such as books, websites, and films.

1. BIU English 106
Citation and Plagiarism
Introduction to Literary Forms and
Critical Writing I
Dr. Daniel Feldman
danielb.feldman@gmail.com

2. Writing Blurbs 6
•
I tend to think of fiction as being mainly about characters and
human beings and inner experience, whereas essays can be
much more expository and didactic and more about subjects or
ideas. If some people read my fiction and see it as
fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably
means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as
alive and interesting as I meant them to be.
--David Foster Wallace, novelist

3. Citation
• What is citation?
– Reference to a book, paper, website, or author
quoted in a scholarly work.
• Why cite?

4. Why cite?
What few undergraduates grasp, given that money is paid in
exchange for their heads being cracked open and education
poured in, is that you don’t purchase ideas with tuition. The
people you read actually own their ideas, and deserve credit
for them. Think of it as idea rental: you are free to use any
ideas you want, but you must distinguish between an idea, or
point of analysis, that is actually yours and one that has been
offered up by someone else whose book you have read.
Potter, Claire. “If I Had College-Age Children.” The
Chronicle.com. 7 Dec. 2011. Web.

5. Why cite?
“Your research paper is a collaboration between you
and your sources. To be fair and ethical, you must
acknowledge your debt to the writers of those
sources. If you don’t, you commit plagiarism, a
serious academic offense” (Hacker 376).
Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers. A Writer’s
Reference. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.
Print.

6. What is plagiarism?
1)
2)
3)
Failing to cite direct quotations and borrowed
ideas.
Failing to enclose borrowed language in
quotation marks.
Failing to put summaries and paraphrases in your
own words.
(ibid.)

7. Plagiarism or Not?
The great fear of the Romans was of revolt. . . . For many Romans
it was impossible to see a Jew bearing arms as anything but an
incipient uprising, complete with arson, murder, pillage, and
rapine. The empire was haunted throughout by a deep and
horrible fear of insurrection.
– From Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm. Lawrence: UP
of Kansas, 1987. Print.
– [The source passage is from page 158.]
• Historian Dudley Taylor Cornish observes that many Romans
were so terrified of revolts that the sight of armed Jews filled
them with fear (158).
– Plagiarized?

8. Plagiarism or Not?
The great fear of the Romans was of revolt. . . . For many Romans it was
impossible to see a Jew bearing arms as anything but an incipient
uprising, complete with arson, murder, pillage, and rapine. The empire
was haunted throughout by a deep and horrible fear of insurrection.
– From Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm. Lawrence: UP of
Kansas, 1987. Print.
– [The source passage is from page 158.]
• Many Romans found it impossible to see a Jew
bearing arms as anything but an incipient uprising
complete with arson, murder, pillage, and rapine.
– Plagiarized?

9. Plagiarism or Not?
The great fear of the Romans was of revolt. . . . For many Romans it was
impossible to see a Jew bearing arms as anything but an incipient
uprising, complete with arson, murder, pillage, and rapine. The empire
was haunted throughout by a deep and horrible fear of insurrection.
– From Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm. Lawrence: UP of
Kansas, 1987. Print.
– [The source passage is from page 158.]
• Historian Dudley Taylor Cornish asserts that "for
many Romans it was impossible to see a Jew
bearing arms as anything but an incipient uprising
complete with arson, murder, pillage, and rapine"
(158).
– Plagiarized?

10. How does one cite?
MLA parenthetical style
Two parts:
1) Parenthetical citations in essay
2) Works cited list after essay

11. How to cite by page #
• 1) Sample statement in essay text:
– Medieval Europe was a place both of “raids, pillages,
slavery, and extortion” and of “traveling merchants,
monetary exchange, towns if not cities, and active markets
in grain” (Townsend 10).
» Close quotes, place author name and page
number in parentheses with no additional
punctuation, final period punctuation.
– Townsend argues that Medieval Europe was a place both of
“raids, pillages, slavery, and extortion” and of “traveling
merchants, monetary exchange, towns if not cities, and
active markets in grain” (10).

12. How to cite by page #
• 2) Sample standard reference for works cited
list:
Townsend, Michael. The Story of the
Soil. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
Townsend, Michael. “Medieval
Betrayals: Land Plots and Empire.”
The Journal of Medieval Literature
21.1 (2001): 7-26.

13. How to cite by URL/title
• 1) Sample citations in essay where possible:
– Kurosawa’s Rashomon was one of the first Japanese films
to attract a Western audience.
– Chan considers the same topic in the context of Hong Kong
cinema.
» Essay provides maximum available information without
parenthetical citation.
» Often preferable to include a name in the text.
– The utilitarianism of the Victorians “attempted to reduce
decision-making about human actions to a ‘felicific calculus’”
(Everett).
» Author cited but no page number available.

14. Sample citations by URL/title
• 2) Sample references for digital / film sources in works cited list:
– Chan, Evans. “Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema.”
Postmodern Culture 10.3 (2000): n. pag. Project Muse. Web.
– Everett, Glenn. “Utilitarianism.” The Victorian Web. 11 Oct.
2002. Web.
– Kurosawa, Akira, dir. Rashomon. Daiei, 1950. Film.

15. Use Quotations Judiciously
• When the quotation is especially vivid or expressive.
• When technical accuracy is necessary.
• When it is important to cite a contentious perspective
verbatim.
• When the expert’s words lend gravitas to an
argument.
• When the quotation’s exact words pertain to your
analysis.
– (Hacker 380)