English 10 / Unit 9: Literary Analysis and Research Writing
9.5 Quoting, Paraphrasing and Plagiarism
Notes
Use sources fairly by giving credit for words and ideas.
- Quoting: using the exact words in quotation marks.
- Paraphrasing: restating a specific passage fully in your own words and sentence structure, about the same length.
- Summarizing: condensing the main ideas into a shorter version.
- All three require a citation.
- Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own, including changing a few words while keeping the original structure ("patchwriting").
- Common knowledge (e.g., Shakespeare wrote Hamlet) does not need a citation.
Practice
A student restates a critic's paragraph in her own words and sentence structure and cites the critic. This is:
It restates in new words with credit.
Which of these does NOT need a citation?
Widely known, easily verified facts are common knowledge.
A student copies a sentence from a website, swaps three words for synonyms, and gives no citation. This is:
Keeping the original structure without credit is plagiarism.
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