Plagiarism and Citing your Sources from the Internet*
In our information-based society ideas and words are just as real and just as precious as gold and silver of earlier eras. Stealing someone else's ideas is no more acceptable than stealing someone else's possessions, and it will get you in a lot of trouble. But why steal something that is already free?
The only cost to you as a student for using somebody else's ideas is that you must give them appropriate credit and that is very easy to do. If you get an idea from any source, you must cite that source, even if you do not use the same wording: "Follow this simple rule of thumb: 'when in doubt, cite your source'" (Cason, 1998). The previous sentence is a case in point. I found the quotation on the web-site of Prof. Jeffrey Cason at Middlebury College. If this syllabus had a section for Literature Cited, it would contain the following entry:
Cason, Jeffrey. 1998.
Course Requirements. Available WWW:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ps103a-s98/requirements.html [Accessed 17 August
1999].
For the sake of clarity, we recommend that you follow a particular format for citations.
MOST MISTAKES IN SOURCING AND DOCUMENTATION COME FROM SOURCES FOUND FROM THE INTERNET. WE URGE THAT YOU CAREFULLY CONSULT AN APPROPRIATE INTERNET CITATION STYLE GUIDE
While
the traditional standard reference is the Chicago Manual of Style (section
on citing the internet),
when using the Internet, you may also wish to consult:
Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor, The Columbia Guide to Online Style (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1998).
If you have any questions or doubts about what to cite, you must contact your instructor before you hand in a paper with questionable references. It is better to be late to come up with your own ideas and properly cite those that you take from others than to risk your grade--perhaps even your college career--by needlessly stealing somebody else's ideas and failing to credit them.
In the unlikely event
that a student still finds it necessary to plagiarize, we will deal with such
incidents in accordance with the provisions of the Colorado College's Academic
Honor System
*Adopted from Kevin Deegan Krause, PhD, Wayne State University