Writing and Talking About History > Resources for Writing Papers > Understanding Plagiarism

Understanding Plagiarism
(based on the Mary Washington College Honor Code)

Plagiarism
Common Knowledge
Parapharasing
Quoted Matter

Plagiarism consists of presenting the language (words), ideas, or facts of another author as one's original work.

If you have any doubt about the source of your information or ideas, include the appropriate reference. Students often fear including too many citations in one paper. You could face expulsion for plagiarism, you cannot be expelled for having too many citations. Also, if you are concerned that your paper has too many citations think about how to reformulate your paper to include more of your own ideas.
 
Common Knowledge

Common knowledge is information that is widely known and/or quickly accessible to the reader (not the author).
 
The reader must be able to check its accuracy, without citations from the author of the paper (a) quickly in any good library and (b) usually in a variety of secondary sources.

Facts that are common knowledge do not require documentation.

An example of common knowledge: Independence Day is celebrated on the fourth of July.
 
A person's birthday and date of death, presidential tenures, and other dates are considered common knowledge unless they are the subject of historical dispute.
 
If you have any doubts about whether the information that you want to include is common knowledge, provide a complete citation.
 
Also, be sure to notice whether all of the authors whom you have read derive their facts, dates, or other information from the same source. If so, it may not be considered common knowledge.

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Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is the significant or complete rewording of a passage or an idea, using one's own sentence structure. All paraphrased information must be documented (except for common knowledge).

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Quoted Matter

All direct quotations must be enclosed in quotation marks and must be documented.

Even if the author's name and the title of the work in which quotations appear are cited in the narrative, the quotations must be in quote marks and documented.
 
Even if the sources are documented in footnotes, quotations must be in quote marks. If they are not, it will appear as if the ideas belong to the documented sources but that the words belong to the author of the paper. In fact, both ideas and words belong to the cited sources. Claiming either is plagiarism.
 
* Sometimes even one word can be significant and require quotation marks (and, of course, documentation). However, in most cases, colloquial phrases do NOT require quotation marks.* Quotations of more than three consecutive significant words should be enclosed in quotation marks.* Quotations of more than three lines should be double indented and single spaced.

An example from Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing about History, third edition (New York: Longman, 1999), 23.

"You may find that some ideas that you get on your own are similar to those you read in secondary sources. You should then document those secondary sources and either in a footnote or in the body of your text point out the similarities and the differences."1

If you decided to use this long quotation in your text, it would appear as follows:

Note that the quotation is single-spaced, indented on both the left and the right sides, and is NOT enclosed in quotation marks.

(Note: In this Web version, the footnote above is not indicated as superscript, as it should be in print.)

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