Joe Schmoe La Dough Avoiding Plagiarism
The contributors to Everyone's an Author provide a fairly complete list of what must be cited and what does not need to be acknowledged in formal writing. Common knowledge, data well known to a given audience, information from famous documents, or one's own work: none of these requires a citation. Yet other materials certainly need to be identified by their creators on a Works Cited or bibliography page. Specific ideas, whether summarized, paraphrased, or quoted, need to be credited. Specialized information in only a few outlets should be cited, as well. Of course, materials like tables and graphs fall into this category, as well (Lunsford, et al. 528-29). It is fairly easy to provide examples. For instance, most people know that Thomas Jefferson was our third president. A convention of sports enthusiasts would not need to be told that the New York Yankees are baseball's most successful team, with twenty-seven World Series victories. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech is a famous document, and most of its phrasing at least somewhat familiar to Americans. None of these needs documentation. However, specific information about Jefferson's personal life or words he wrote about the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 should be cited. If Mris. Coretta Scott King was alleged by some of Dr. King's biographers to have contributed to "I have a dream," this should be documented, too. I'd imagine that a list of the five Yankees players who were on the most Series-winning teams would need a source. Ultimately, avoiding plagiarism is not that difficult. It's yours, or it's not.
Works Cited
Lunsford, Andrea, et al., eds. Everyone's an Author. New York: Norton, 2017.
Timmermans, Maurice. "New Anti-Plagiarism Software." Observant 10 September 2014. https://www.observantonline.nl/English/Home/Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2815/New-anti-plagiarism-software. Accessed 6 January 2019
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