Working with Sources...

On this response essay, in which you make a claim about the Cold War and discuss it, you are making use of multiple sources for your supporting evidence. This raises an interesting problem which we need to take a few moments to address.

First, a reminder . . .

No doubt, you have been told that you must always explain where you get your evidence if it comes from any source other than your own experience. There is a very good reason for this advice. Our contemporary society takes very seriously the concept of intellectual ownership. Just as you may not come into my garage and take my truck and drive it as though it were yours, so you cannot take my words and use them as your own. My ideas and how I express them are my property, just as my truck is.

Taking someone else's ideas and words and passing them off as your own, whether you do it intentionally or accidentally, is considered a crime and can result in severe consequences. Known as plagiarism, this practice, whenever detected, is always punished here at Andrews. When students have been known to plagiarize, they may fail the paper which was plagiarized, or they may fail the entire class. Some students have been expelled from their programs for plagiarism. A recent case at Harvard University involved a woman who plagiarized a paper at the end of her senior year. She was expelled from Harvard, and the courts, when she tried to sue to finish her studies, upheld the university.

Now, if you came to me one day and said, "I've got a table and six chairs that I need to move over to my house. May I borrow your truck?" I'm likely to say, "Sure." I might even offer to help. In the same way, you have the freedom to use my words and ideas in your own writing, so long as you tell where you got them. That's common practice in western writing. And here's how it's done. I'll explain the Modern Language Association (MLA) style since that's the one we'll be using in class.

Though it can be very complicated in some styles such as the Chicago style or Turabian, the principle is very simple in MLA: Whenever you use borrowed information such as a quotation, a paraphrase, or a summary, simply provide the author's name and the page number from which you got the source, then list the source in your Works Cited page, the page on which you list the complete reference of each source you used. We'll talk more about the Works Cited page later. Just now I'm interested in what is often called "in-text citation" because it's done in text rather than using note numbers. Remember to always put quotations around any group of words you borrow exactly. If you paraphrase, which involves putting someone else's words into your own, or if you summarize, which involves giving a brief review of a much longer work, you don't need the quotation marks, though it's helpful to give the page numbers from which the material comes.

The easiest and most common way to do an "in-text citation" is to provide the author's name and page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence as in this example. Notice the position of the period at the end of the sentence.

Though skunks make good pets, they do present certain challenges, such as their tendency to spray a foul odor as a defense mechanism. The typical approach skunk owners take is to have the scent glands surgically removed, but "this is a highly inhumane approach which leaves the skunk defenseless should it ever find itself abandoned in the wild" (Gertrude Heidlebarron, 56).

You can also put the author's name in the sentence and the page number at the end. Notice that this example involves using a paraphrase rather than a quotation. Notice again the position of the period at the end of the sentence.

Roger Morrison suggests that the hardest part of keeping a skunk as a pet is learning how to avoid being sprayed on. The solution to this problem, Morrison suggests, is to always keep the pet confined in a cage, or if the pet must be handled, take care to hold its tail down securely so that it cannot spray. Skunks will not spray themselves; if they cannot spray an enemy without fouling themselves, they will not spray (37).

Sometimes it's good to put an identification with the name, particularly when the author's credentials are important. This time I used a quotation from this "source." Once again, the page number is at the end of the sentence.

George Phemious, a pet psychologist who has worked extensively with domesticated skunks, suggests that "living with a skunk is mostly a matter of psychology. One must learn to psyche out' the skunk, to convince it that it has no reason to fear danger and therefore need not spray" (15).

If you happen to have multiple authors, give all their names:

Smith and Wesson suggest that skunks make lousy pets and they should all be shot (34).

If you have no author's name, use the title of the document, usually in parentheses at the end of the sentence:

Because the skunk is such an unusual pet, it's a great conversation starter ("Keeping Skunks and other Unusual Pets," 12)

Don't allow a quotation to stand alone. Always incorporate it into your own sentence:

NOT THIS: "Skunks are unusually easy to feed. They will eat anything from the kitchen table" (Stripe Benson, 42).

BUT THIS: One pet nutritionist suggests that "Skunks are unusually easy to feed. They will eat anything from the kitchen table" (Stripe Benson, 42).