8.1: Using Citations and Avoiding Plagiarism

When Should You Cite?

Writing in an academic and professional context often entails engaging with the words and ideas of other authors. Therefore, being able to correctly and fluently incorporate and engage with other writers’ words or ideas in your own writing is a critical skill.

There are three main ways to integrate evidence from sources into your writing: quoting (See 8.2: Using Quotations ), paraphrasing (See 8.3: Including Paraphrases), and summarizing (See 8.4: Writing Summaries). Each form requires a citation because you are using another person’s words and/or ideas. Even if you paraphrase—put content into your own words—you still must give credit to the original author because you are using their ideas.

Citations come in two forms: in-text citations and end/full citations. There are many different citation styles. Two of the most common academic styles are American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA). MLA is used more frequently in the humanities, while APA is used more commonly in the social sciences and sciences. In ENGL 250, APA-style documentation is used.

What Is Included in an APA-style In-text Citations?

In-text citations are used within the text of your work to indicate the source of information or ideas . That way, even if you have multiple sources, it is always clear which source you are using at any given time.

APA-style in-text citations typically include the author’s last name and year of publication. For quoted content, the location details (page number, paragraph number, timestamp) are also included.

e.g., The APA-style in-text citation for the Science News article “Why Kitchen Sponges Are the Perfect Home for Bacteria” written by Anna Gibbs and published on March 1, 2022 would be as follows: (Gibbs, 2022, para. #).

If a source has a corporate author, the corporation name would replace the author’s last name.

e.g., The APA-style in-text citation for the Statistics Canada infographic “Canadian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Attributable to Households, 2018” that was published on March  28, 2022 would be as follows: (Statistics Canada, 2022, para. #).

These are examples of parenthetical in-text citation; however, it’s also possible to use APA’s narrative citation style, which is defined by APA (2020) in the following way: “In narrative citations, the author name is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence and the year follows in parentheses” (para. 1).

Here is an example of a narrative citation:

e.g., According to Statistics Canada (2022), “About 40.9% of Canadian emissions were the result of Canadian household consumption and use of goods and services in 2018” (para. 2).

What Is Included in Reference List Entries?

In-text citations should always have a corresponding reference list entry. These have three major parts: 1) information about the person/body that created the source; 2) information that distinguishes the content of the specific work being cited; 3) information about the location or creation of the work. Here is an example of an article’s reference list entry parts:

Author: Anna Gibbs

Publication: Science News

Article Title: Why Kitchen Sponges Are the Perfect Home for Bacteria

Publication Date: March 1, 2022

Retrieval Details: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sponge-kitchen-bacteria-microbe-diversity

Reference list entry: 

Gibbs, A. (2022). Why kitchen sponges are the perfect home for bacteria. Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sponge-kitchen-bacteria-microbe-diversity

In addition, many research databases and library catalogs offer citation tools that help you auto-generate reference list entries. Look for a button or link labeled “cite” or “citation.” Be sure to double check for accuracy since they may include some minor errors (e.g., incorrect use of italics or capitalization).

How Can You Avoid Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else’s work or idea as your own. More specifically, it is the act of claiming language, ideas, opinions, theories, software code, artistic material, or anything else developed by another person without acknowledging that person as the source of the material.

Regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional, plagiarism is considered dishonest, unfair, and unethical.

There are serious consequences for both intentional and unintentional plagiarism. As a student, the consequences of plagiarism can range from the loss of credit for an assignment to expulsion from school. In the workplace, the consequences of plagiarism can include loss of your professional reputation to loss of your job and destruction of your career. As a student at Centennial College, you should be familiar with Centennial’s Academic Honesty and Plagiarism Policy.

The primary way to avoid plagiarism is to cite or list the sources you used in preparing your work. Citing a source is the way you tell your audience whose works you used and give credit to the creator. It has the side benefit of providing your audience with a bibliography of relevant items on that topic. Only information that is considered to be universally common knowledge for your audience, such as dates of important events and widely known facts,  can be used without citing the source.

How Does Turnitin Check Source Use?

In most Centennial College courses, student work will be submitted to Turnitin for originality vetting. Turnitin will cross-reference a student’s submission against published work and against other student work. A Turnitin report will highlight any content that is not original to that student’s submission and will include a number (e.g., 21%) that indicates the percentage of the report content that overlaps with other work. Students often ask “What is an acceptable Turnitin number?” The answer is, unfortunately, it depends! It depends on the purpose, scope, and design of the submitted work.

For example, if you are asked to write a report that summarizes recent discoveries in the field of mechanical engineering, your report should include a fair amount of unoriginal content, which will be highlighted by Turnitin. This highlighted content will include any article titles, quoted content, names and terminology that you include in the report. It will also include the professor’s name, course name, and other generic content that relates to the course you are taking. Given all of this, it’s possible that your Turnitin number will be around 25-35%, but in such a case, this number would not indicate any issues.

Plagiarism & Turnitin

Turnitin will highlight content that is copied and pasted from a published source. If this content is not correctly quoted, paraphrased or summarized with a citation, this would be a case of plagiarism.

Sometimes, Turnitin may highlight content that you took word-for-word from a source without using quotation marks. Even though you may have included an in-text citation, this is also an example of plagiarism. By excluding the quotation marks, you are indicating that the content is in your own words rather than the words of another writer, and in this way, you are not giving acknowledgement to that author.

Further, Turnitin may highlight content that you took from another student’s work or from an assignment that you submitted previously for a different course. Unless this is approved by the instructor, this would also be plagiarism.

Self-check & Turnitin

You can use Turnitin to your advantage as a writer. By submitting your work to the Turnitin self-check dropbox first (on your eCentennial homepage), you can review your Turnitin report before handing in your work to your instructor. This will allow you to catch any cases of unintentional plagiarism in your work and make edits before final submission.