Referencing

In the Take Careful Notes section, you learned how to generate electronic note cards by copying and pasting information in a way that does not invite plagiarism. Once you have the information at hand, you must decide how it will best fit into your paper: as a quote, a paraphrase, or a summary. Before making that decision, here are some things to consider:

• Do not make the mistake of reading all your sources without taking notes and then trying to go back and find the information you remember. You must show where you got your information.
• Break up the information so that you have only one idea per note.
• Always place quotation marks around the notes you copy and paste; the computer does not know you are copying a direct quote unless you tell it.
• Use a quote in your final draft when the author's words are the best way to express the information.
• Be wary of long quotes. Too many long quotes will make your paper more someone else's words than your own ­ plagiarism.
• Paraphrase carefully, never echoing the sentence structure used in the original text.
• Summarize by shortening the information to a manageable length. A summary should be much shorter than what's being summarized.

See how to incorporate information by

Quoting

Paraphrasing

Summarizing