General Judiciary Constitution
Citation 101
- Plagiarism: The Do's and Don'ts
- Word-for-Word Plagiarizing
- The Summary and Paraphrase
- The Mosaic
- The "Apt" Term
- Common Knowledge Exceptions
Plagiarism: The Do's and Don'ts
General Judiciary realizes that the transition from writing for high school to writing for college can be a very stressful experience. Through the help of your Writing 125 class, you will gain much of the instruction you will need to help guide you through your Wellesley papers. However, even the best writers sometimes get confused about documentation. To help to ease the way for you, General Judiciary has prepared the following information on plagiarism that we hope will help you throughout your Wellesley years. This is by no means an entirely comprehensive overview of plagiarism, and you should feel free to consult other sources when necessary. Please don't hesitate to confer with our professors if you have any remaining questions.
What is Plagiarism?
"The unacknowledged use of another person's work, in the form of original ideas, strategies, and research as well as another person's writing in the form of sentences, phrases, and innovative terminology." (Brenda Spatt, Writing from Sources, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983, p. 438)
DO'S:
- DO acknowledge all sources: use direct quotes AND paraphrases.
- DO take clear notes: be sure to mark your ideas separate from the author's ideas.
- DO utilize the resources available on campus; e.g., the Learning & Teaching Center.
- DO make your citations clear and concise.
DON'TS:
- DON'T turn in the same paper for two different classes.
- DON'T forget to credit your sources.
- DON'T change a few words in the ideas of the author and then call them your own.
REMEMBER: No matter how small, your work is a contribution to the academic world. always respect the ideas of others. When in doubt, ask your professor!
Original Source:
[Warfare] is an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives, such as writing, marriage, cooking our food instead of eating it raw, trial by jury, or burial of the dead, and so on. Some of this list any one will grant are inventions: trial by jury is confined to very limited portions of the globe; we know that there are tribes that do not bury their dead but instead expose or cremate them; and we know that only part of the human race has had a knowledge of writing as its cultural inheritance. But, whenever a way of doing things is found universally, such as the use of fire or the practice of some form of marriage, we tend to think at once that it is not an invention at all but an attribute of humanity itself. -Margaret Mead (from Warfare: An invention-not a biological necessity")
Unacceptable Word-for-Word Plagiarism:
We know that there are many cultures that do not have warfare, and therefore it seems that warfare is an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives such as writing, marriage, cooking our food instead of eating it raw, trial by jury, or burial of the dead.
Acceptable Version:
As Margaret Mead has concluded, one way of deciding whether or not a cultural behavior is an invention is seeing how pervasive it is in other cultures. We know that there are wide variations in such behavior as marriage, raising children, or division of labor by males and females, so we know that these behaviors are not the same for all humans. We know, also, that warfare does not exist in many cultures, so we can guess that it is merely an invention.
Mead, as you remember, did not write anything about raising children or sharing work. The student brought in these ideas to expand the context of Mead's point. One way to avoid plagiarism, then, is by expanding upon the ideas you find in sources. By adding information, interpreting, or analyzing those ideas, you go beyond the information in the source. Another way to avoid plagiarism is by using a combination of summary, paraphrase, and quotation to refer to information that you found in a particular source.
(Sommers, Nancy and Simon, Linda, The Harper Collins Guide to Writing with Sourcebook. New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1993, p. 270-72.)
A summary condenses information from a source, perhaps capsulizing a chapter in a short paragraph or a paragraph in a single sentence. A paraphrase reports information in roughly the same number of words used by the source. Neither the summary nor the paraphrase borrows extensive language from a source.
Original Source:
Public and scientific interest in the question of apes' ability to use language first soared some 15 years ago when Washoe, a chimpanzee raised like a human child by R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner of the University of Nevada, learned to make hand signs for many words and even seemed to be making short sentences. -Erik Eckholm (from "Pygmy chimp readily learns language skill" New York Times. 1985.)
Summary:
Interest in the ability of apes to use language was sparked in the early seventies, when a chimpanzee named Washoe was taught sign language by R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner (Eckholm B7).
Paraphrase:
Interest in the ability of apes to learn language mounted in the early seventies, with reports that Washoe, a chimpanzee raised and trained by professors R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner, had learned words in sign language and may have even created short sentences. (Eckholm B7).
When you summarize or paraphrase, it is not enough to name the source; you must restate the source's meaning using only your own words. You are guilty of plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty, if you half copy the author's sentences - either by mixing the author's well-chosen words without using quotations marks or by plugging your own synonyms into the author's sentence structure.
Original Version:
If the existence of a signing ape was unsettling for linguists, it was also startling news for animal behaviorists. (Davis 26)
Unacceptable Borrowing of Words:
An ape who knew sign language unsettled linguists and startled animal behaviorists. (Davis 26)
Unacceptable Borrowing of Structure:
If the presence of a sign-language-using chimp was disturbing for scientists studying language, it was also surprising to scientists studying animal behavior (Davis 26)
Acceptable Paraphrase:
When they learned of an ape's ability to use sign language, both linguists and animal behaviorists were taken by surprise (Davis 26)
Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989 p. 170-71.
Original Source
The importance of the Second Treatise of Government printed in this volume is such that without it we should miss some of the familiar features of our own government. It is safe to assert that the much more criticized branch known as the Supreme Court obtained its being as a result of Locke's insistence upon the separation of powers, and that the combination of many powers in the hands of the executive under the New Deal has still to encounter opposition because it is contrary to the principles enunciated therein, the effect of which is not spent, though the relationship may not be consciously traced. Again we see the crystallizing force of Locke's writing. It renders explicit and adapts to the British politics of his day the trend and aim of writers from Languet and Bodin through Hooker and Grotius, to say nothing of the distant ancients, Aristotle, and the Stoic school of natural law. It sums up magisterially the arguments used through ages to attack authority vested in a single individual, but it does so from the particular point of view endangered by the revolution of 1688 and is in harmony with the British scene and mental climate of the growing Bourgeoisie of that age. Montesquieu and Rousseau, the framers of our own Declaration of Independence, and the statesmen (or should we say merchants and spectators?) who drew up the Constitution have re-echoed its claims for human liberty, for the separation of powers, for the sanctity of private property. In the hands of these it has been the quarry of liberal doctrines and that it has served the Socialist theory of property based on labor is final proof of its breadth of view. CHARLES SHERMAN, "Introduction" to John Locke, Treatise of a Civil Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration.
Unacceptable Mosaic
The crystallizing force of Locke's writing may be seen in the effect his Second Treatise of Government had in shaping some of the familiar features of our own government. That much criticized branch known as the Supreme Court and the combination of many powers in the hands of the executive under the New Deal are modern examples. But even the foundations of our state- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution- have re-echoed its claims for human liberty, for the separation of powers, for the sanctity of private property. True, the influence of others is also marked in our Constitution - from the trend and aim of writers like Languet and Bodin, Hooker and Grotius, to say nothing of Aristotle and the Stoic school of natural law: but the fundamental influence is Locke's Treatise, the very quarry of liberal doctrines.
Note how the following phrases have been lifted out of the original text and moved into new patterns:
- crystallizing force of Locke's writing
- some of the familiar features of our own government
- much criticized branch known as the Supreme Court
- combination of many powers in the hands of the executive under the New Deal
- have re-echoed its claims for human liberty...property
- from the trend and aim...Grotius
- to say nothing of Aristotle and...natural law
- quarry of liberal doctrines.
As in the first example, there is really no way of legitimizing such a procedure. To put every stolen phrase within quotation marks would produce an almost unreadable, and quite worthless, text.
The Second Treatise of Government is a veritable quarry of liberal doctrines. In it the crystallizing force of Locke's writing is markedly apparent. The cause of human liberty, the principle of separation of powers, and the inviolability of private property - all three, major dogmas of American constitutionalism - owe their presence in our Constitution in large part to the remarkable Treatise which first appeared around 1685 and was destined to spark, within three years, a revolution in the land of its author's birth and, ninety years later, another revolution against that land.
Here the writer has not been able to resist the appropriation of two striking terms-- "quarry of liberal doctrines" and "crystallizing force"; a perfectly proper use of the terms would have required only the addition of a phrase: the Second Treatise is, to use Sherman's suggestive expression, a "quarry of liberal doctrines." In it the "crystallizing force" -- the term again is Sherman's -- of Locke's writing is markedly apparent...
Other phrases in the text above--"the cause of human liberty," "the principle of the separation of powers," "the inviability of private property" -- are clearly drawn directly from the original source but are so much matters in the public domain, so to speak, that no one could reasonably object to their re-use in this fashion.
Since one of the principle aims of a college education in the development of intellectual honesty, it is obvious that plagiarism is a particularly serious offense, and the punishment of it is commensurately severe. What a penalized student suffers can never really be known by anyone but himself: what the student who plagiarizes and "gets away with" suffers is less public and probably less acute, but the corruptness of his act, the disloyalty and baseness it entails, must inevitably leave a mark on him as well as on the institution of which he is a member.
Harold C. Martin and Richard M. Ohmann, The Logic and Rhetoric of Exposition Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., Revised Edition 1963.
5. Common Knowledge Exceptions
Personal notes and synthesis of library sources are one's own, along with the thesis, topic sentences, analyses, and concluding discussion. In addition, factual information of a general nature, called "common knowledge," recurs in source after source. For example most sources of Franklin Pierce will report common knowledge: his birth and death, 1804-69, his role at age 48 at 14th President of the United States from 1853-57, and even his role as supporter of the Compromise of 1850 and his later criticism of Abraham Lincoln. However, if one historian comments that Pierce's handling of the slavery issue ruined his effectiveness as President, a citation to the source would be in order.
Remember this general rule: information that occurs in five or more sources may be considered general knowledge.
Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers: A complete guide. 5th ed. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1987, p.81.