Referencing
Plagiarism
Bibliographies
Harvard referencing
Footnotes and Endnotes
This is the BSSS definition of plagiarism:
BSSS Plagiarism Policy
Definition
Plagiarism is the copying, paraphrasing or summarising of work, in any form, without acknowledgement of sources, and presenting this as your own work.
Examples of plagiarism1 could include, but are not limited to:
• Submitting all or part of another person’s work with or without that person’s knowledge.
• Submitting all or part of a paper from a source text without proper acknowledgement.
• Copying part of another person’s work from a source text, supplying proper acknowledgement, but leaving out quotation marks.
• Submitting materials that paraphrase or summarise another person’s work or ideas without appropriate acknowledgement.
• Submitting a digital image, sound, design, photograph or animation, altered or unaltered, without proper acknowledgement. (What is Plagiarism, 2010, p. 3).
This is the Marist College Canberra policy on plagiarism:
Cheating in your academic work
Cheating can take many forms, including, but not limited to:
1. copying during a test or other assessment work;
2. submitting an assignment which has been largely copied from a book, article,CD-ROM, or the internet or from another student. This is called plagiarism;
3. getting another person (your parents or a tutor for example) to do most of an assignment for you.
In general, any work you submit should be your own, using your own words and your own understanding of the material. If you quote from a source, that source must be acknowledged. If you hand in material which is greatly different from your normal class and homework, the teacher may ask you to explain or may question you closely on your understanding of the work. In exceptional cases, you may be required to do an amended or abridged version of that particular piece of work under test conditions. The decision to do this would be taken in consultation with the Dean of Studies and the head of department. Because Marist College takes seriously its responsibility to deal justly and equitably with all students, we deal severely with any form of plagiarism or cheating. A student found guilty of a first offence will lose all marks for that particular item and may lose all marks for the unit or course. An interview with the students, parents/guardians will also be arranged at which time the possible penalties for a second offence will be outlined. For a second offence, even if in a different course, a student will lose all marks for the unit or course. In addition, a student and his parents will be required to justify his continuation at the College (Assessment Policy Overview).
What is referencing?
There are 2 main types of referencing generally accepted in academic work:
· the Harvard or in-text referencing (slightly different variations have different names such as APA style amongst others) and
· footnote referencing ( this has many names including Oxford referencing, Chicago referencing)
Some courses at some educational establishments require you to use Endnotes rather than Footnotes.
Referencing is acknowledging any work / research / ideas which are not your own and which you have sourced from elsewhere.
Therefore the following need to be referenced:
· images that you use in an assignment (even the picture on the cover page of your assignment)
· direct quotes in your assignment.
· Paraphrasing
· Cobbled information
· Ideas and argument which you have put together from numerous sources
Titles of novels, films, plays – when typed, should be in italics eg. Lord of the Flies.
- when hand written, should be underlined or in inverted commas.
Quotes should be in inverted commas. If you are using double inverted commas for quotes, use single inverted commas for titles. If you are using single inverted commas for quotes, use double inverted quotes for titles.
What and how to reference:
Below is a portion of an article which has been directly copied from the Blooms Literature Online. Note that the reference details are included at the end of the article and in the bibliography.
Lord of the Flies, the Robinson Crusoe of our time, still enjoys—like the earlier island story of shipwreck and survival—a pre-eminent place in the cultural climate of the West. Both cultural document and modern classic, the novel continues to provoke critical attention at the same time as it continues to prompt great general interest; over the past fifty years it has sold countless millions of copies. An obdurate and uncompromising story about how boys—very 1950s British boys—become beasts when the constraints of authority are withdrawn from their closed world, Lord of the Flies has proved to be a sustained literary and popular success.
Two feature films of the book have been produced, as well as a theatrical adaptation by the actor Nigel Williams—with performances in schools in England tied to an education programme which included interactive resource packs on the Internet—and ongoing productions in such venues as Canada's Stratford Festival in Ontario. Surf the Internet and one comes upon several sites referencing as well as simplistically analyzing the novel, including one that posts a (wholly concocted, unauthoritative, and unascribed) visual image of the novel's unnamed South Sea island. Regularly, and more painfully, the novel's title has been used to ponder the seeming rise in the United States and Great Britain of killings of children by children, from two-year-old James Bulger's murder in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys in Liverpool to the mass maiming and murder of children at Columbine High School in Utah by two teenage boys in April 1999.
______
Normally, you would not copy such an extensive piece of text to use in an assessment task. However, we will use this excerpt to examine how to reference direct quotes and paraphrasing.
Perhaps the task question you are responding to is:
How is ‘Lord of the Flies” relevant today?
What is often difficult to work out is how much is your own knowledge and how much is knowledge that you have gained from readings (and therefore has to be referenced).
If you have not read the novel, you probably know little about the article. Therefore working out prior knowledge is simple. Other than the title and the author, most of what you write would need to be referenced.
In order to do well in an essay, you need to use a range of sources on the novel and the author. You should use a combination of quotes and paraphrasing. Remember, everything must be referenced.
Preparation for essay writing:
As soon as you start looking around for articles / information to inform your writing, start keeping the bibliographic details.
A good way to keep track of notes is to start a new page for each new source. It is easy to do this on a Word document, but you need to be careful that you make clear whether the notes are directly copied from the source (quoted) or whether you have made notes in your own words (ie paraphrased).
Author / Title / Publication details / web address / Access date (web or online journals)Notes: / Quotes or my notes
Evaluation of source:
The evaluation of the source is always handy when you come to compile your essay. It will help you remember how useful the information really was and whether you believe it was a reliable or weak source. An example of a weak source would be Wikipedia readings.
Direct quote – 4 lines or less:
Remember: the question you are responding to is How is ‘Lord of the Flies” relevant today?
Lord of the Flies is relevant today as it explores the darker side of humanity. Recent film interpretations have transposed the film into the modern era while recent criminal events show the cruelty man is capable of. Boyars argues, “the novel's title has been used to ponder the seeming rise in the United States and Great Britain of killings of children by children, from two-year-old James Bulger's murder in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys in Liverpool to the mass maiming and murder of children at Columbine High School in Utah by two teenage boys in April 1999” (2003).Just as the children on the island showed they were capable of treating each other badly, children today demonstrate their capacity for cruelty.
Notes regarding the above quote:
· The essay/example is double spaced.
· It is less than 5 lines therefore it is quoted in the text as part of the paragraph.
· Quotation marks show the beginning and end of the quote.
· There is a comma before the quote begins, not a colon or semi-colon.
· The author’s name begins the statement therefore it is not needed in the brackets at the end of the quote.
· The quote is not in italics.
· This quote is from an internet site which generally does not have page numbers. If your reference was from a book or journal, your reference would include the page number after the date eg. Boyar (2003, p.11)
Direct quote – 5 lines or more.
Lord of the Flies is relevant today as it explores the darker side of humanity. The conflict between the boys is as probable today as it was when the novel was first written. Boyar explains,
the novel continues to provoke critical attention at the same time as it continues to prompt great general interest; over the past fifty years it has sold countless millions of copies. An obdurate and uncompromising story about how boys—very 1950s British boys—become beasts when the constraints of authority are withdrawn from their closed world, Lord of the Flies has proved to be a sustained literary and popular success (2003).
Even though the boys are British and the novel is set in the 1950s, its popularity is due to its brutality, honesty and the readers’ knowledge that this could happen today.
Notes regarding the above quote:
· The essay / example is double spaced.
· The quote is more than 4 lines long and therefore is single spaced, indented and without quotation marks (the indentation shows that this is a quote).
· There is a comma before the quote begins, not a colon or semi-colon.
· The author’s name begins the quote, therefore it is not needed in the brackets at the end of the quote.
· The quote is not in italics.
· This quote is from an internet site which generally does not have page numbers. If your reference was from a book or journal, your reference would include the page number after the date eg. Boyar (2003, p.21)
Reminder questions:
How should a title for a film or novel be indicated in a typed document?
______
How do you indicated a quote in a hand written document?
______
What needs to be referenced in an essay?
______
Should Wikipedia be used a source in a Year 11 essay? Why or why not?
______
Practice Question 1:
Read the following excerpt from the article by Boyar.
A group of schoolboys, educated by British public schools in a system still designed to control an empire, are dropped on an Edenic island in the Pacific Ocean. There they confront the task of survival. First the boys proceed to set up a pragmatic system based on a 'grown-up' model: government, laws, shelters, plumbing facilities, and food supplies. Quickly, however, the society disintegrates under the dual pressures of aggression and superstition. Signal fire becomes defensive hearth, then ritualistic spit: the darkness of night becomes a monstrous 'beast' to be propitiated by totemic pig heads. Hunting becomes killing as Jack's hunters break loose from Ralph's fire-keepers to form a tribal society with gods, rituals, and territory at the island's end.
Write a paragraph of at least 4 sentences explaining how the boys attempt to copy the society they have been isolated from. Use a short quote to support your paragraph. Reference the quote correctly.
______
Practice question 2:
Rewrite the following paragraph, referencing the quote correctly.
The plot of Lord of the Flies revolves around a group of schoolboys, educated by British public schools in a system still designed to control an empire, [who] are dropped on an Edenic island in the Pacific Ocean. There they confront the task of survival. First the boys proceed to set up a pragmatic system based on a 'grown-up' model: government, laws, shelters, plumbing facilities, and food supplies. The boys attempt to copy the society from which they are now are isolated.
______The ‘Lord of the Flies’ follows a group of British schoolboys who find themselves stranded on an island in the Pacific Ocean (Boyar, 2003). The boys are faced with the task of survival and the need to set up a system of government; this includes “government, laws, shelters, plumbing facilities and food supplies” (Boyar, 2003). As a result, the boys try to recreate the imperialistic society from which they are now isolated (Boyar, 2003).
Paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing is when you take ideas from somewhere else and put them into your own words. This needs to be referenced because you are not using only your own knowledge.
Cobbling is another form of paraphrasing where you take phrases from an article / text and use them to create your own paragraph. Again, this must be referenced or you have plagiarised.
Example:
The schoolboys in Lord of the Flies are stranded on an island like the Garden of Eden in the Pacific Ocean. They must work out how to survive. They decide to set up a system of government similar to the government the grown-ups have in Britain (Boyar, 2003).
Notes regarding the above paraphrasing;
· The information is the same as from the original article.
· It is additional to my knowledge.
· It must be referenced.
· The reference comes at the end of the paraphrased portion.
· The reference must include the author’s name and the date of publication. If the original article has page numbers, the relevant page number must also be included.
Practice question 3:
Paraphrase and reference the following information in a short paragraph.