writing

"Write to illuminate."

HOW TO PROPERLY FORMAT CITATIONS and REFERENCES

In-text citations. Every article mentioned in your research proposal should be in your literature cited section at the back, and every article in your literature cited section should be found in your proposal. Every time an article is cited, the citation should list the authors' last name(s) and the year. Articles with more than two authors should have "et al." in place of other author names following the first author. Here is an example involving one single-authored paper, one co-authored paper, and one with more than two authors:

Some biologists (Podolsky 2002), have said one thing, while others (Sotka and Sancho 2003, Strand et al. 2004) have said another.

Of course, if the authors--like Podolsky (2002), or Sotka and Sancho (2003), or Strand et al. (2004)--are actually mentioned as part of the sentence, then only the year goes in the parentheses.

Literature cited section. References in the literaturex cited section at the back of your proposal should follow a simple format such as the one shown below (Author(s). Year. Title. Journal volume:pages.)

Strand A, Plante C, Harold A (2004). Acceptable citation styles for research reports. Journal of Literature Citation 6:121-126.

HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARISM

Your writing should synthesize, in your own words, what you've read. Do not rearrange parts of sentences written by the authors or simply change, remove, or add words--these all constitute plagiarism. And although it may go against what you learned for other styles of writing, do not quote authors verbatim. The following examples may help to understand what constitutes plagiarism. If you're still unsure, see guidelines here or here. Do not risk having your grade lowered for unintentional plagiarism, or having your paper handed over to the honor court, which I am obligated to do if I suspect intentional plagiarism.

Examples of plagiarism.

Imagine that a source (Smith, 2002) includes the following sentence:

Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers.

The following four sentences would all be examples of plagiarism. It makes no difference that the author is cited. Each sentence involves only rearrangement or changing of a few words--the sentence has the same basic structure.

Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers (Smith, 2002).

Orchids manufacture, from the ordinary components of flowers, their complex devices (Smith, 2002).

Orchids make devices for pollination using the ordinary parts of flowers (Smith, 2002).

Orchids assemble their convoluted mechanisms from the general apparatus of average flowers (Smith, 2002).

Notice that efforts to substitute synonyms, in addition to being plagiarism, can also badly obscure the meaning.

Do not quote parts of the text you read.

Putting quotation marks around a sentence, while technically not plagiarism, is also unacceptable scholarship because you have not demonstrated your understanding of what was reported.

Smith (2002) said that "Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers."

The only time you should ever quote text is if you need to comment specifically on the author's exact words and the meaning would be lost unless you quoted exactly.

Improve your reporting by synthesizing what you have read.

Instead of simply reworking the sentence taken directly from a source or quoting it directly, express an important idea in your own words, adding other useful details you've read about in other places:

The structures that orchids use to attract and position pollinators evolved from typical flower parts, like petals, that at one time served other functions (Smith, 2002).

Here is your mantra: "My writing must be in my own words, using my own sentence and paragraph structure, based on my own understanding."

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