Ms. Gokturk
Guidelines for the Research
Paper
From: A Statement on
Plagiarism
http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml
MLA Citation Rules and Parenthetical
Documentation
http://lpc1.clpccd.cc.ca.us/lpc/lrc/cited_rules.html
PLAGIARISM! Using someone
else's ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own,
either on purpose or through carelessness, is a serious offense known as
plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing" includes written or spoken
material, of course from whole papers and paragraphs to sentences, and,
indeed, phrases but it also includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc.
"Someone else" can mean a professional source, such as a published
writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic
resource such as material we discover on the World Wide Web; another student at
our school or anywhere else; a paper-writing "service" (online or
otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee.
Let us suppose, for example, that we're doing a paper for Music
Appreciation on the child prodigy years of the composer and pianist Franz Liszt
and that we've read about the development of the young artist in several
sources. In Alan Walker's book Franz
Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (Ithaca: 1983), we read that Liszt's father
encouraged him, at age six, to play the piano from memory, to sight-read music
and, above all, to improvise. We can report in our paper (and in our own words)
that Liszt was probably the most gifted of the child prodigies making their
mark in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century because that is the kind of
information we could have gotten from a number of sources; it has become what
we call common knowledge.
However, if we report on the
boy's father's role in the prodigy's development, we should give proper credit
to Alan Walker. We could write, for instance, the following: Franz Liszt's
father encouraged him, as early as age six, to practice skills which later
served him as an internationally recognized prodigy (Walker 59). Or, we
could write something like this: Alan Walker notes that, under the tutelage
of his father, Franz Liszt began work in earnest on his piano playing at the
age of six (59). Not to give
QUOTATIONS and PARANTHETHICAL
CITATIONS
You must quote your sources AS WELL AS CITE PARANTHETICALLY.
Quotations that constitute fewer than five lines in your paper should be
set off with quotation marks [ 
] and be incorporated within the normal flow of your text. For material
exceeding that length, omit the quotation marks and indent the quoted language
one inch from your left-hand margin. If an indented quotation is taken entirely
from one paragraph, the first line should be even with all the other lines in
that quotation; however, if an indented quotation comes from two or more
paragraphs, indent the first line of each paragraph an additional one-quarter
inch.
If quotation marks appear within the text of a quotation that already has
the usual double-quote marks [
] around it (a quote-within-a-quote), set off that inner quotation with
single-quote marks [
] . Such a quote-within-a-quote within an indented quotation is marked with
double-quote marks.
In the
The first two lines of this stanza, "My little horse must
think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near," remind us of a nursery
rhyme.
(Note, also, the slash mark / (with a space on either side) to denote the
poem's line-break.) But observe the placement of this semicolon:
There is a hint of the nursery rhyme in the line "My little
horse must think it queer"; however, the poem then quickly turns darkly
serious.
Pay close attention to the placement of commas and periods in the use of
citations.
USE CITATIONS
Documentation will take two forms in your final paper:
·
In the Works
Cited section, where all the sources you've used should be listed
alphabetically, and
·
Within the text
of your paper, where parentheses should show your readers where you found each
piece of information that you have used. These textual citations allow the
reader to refer to your Works Cited page(s) for further information.
IN THE
BODY of your paper: Parenthetical Documentation
- MLA recommends parenthetical documentation
instead of footnoting. Parenthetical documentation is a brief reference in
the paper directly after the sentence or paragraph in which you quote from
the book or use its ideas. (Author
27) referring to page 27 of a book listed in the Works Cited takes the
place of a footnote. (Author 27) guides the reader of the paper to the
full entry for that author in the Works Cited. If the Works Cited lists a
work by title, use a shortened form of the title and page number. Examples
follow.
- When the author is mentioned in the sentence
only put the page number in the parentheses. Place the period after the
parentheses, not within the quotation marks. For example: Carter Hardy believes that the
"increased intake of sugar cereals among teachers has significantly
raised classroom narcolepsy" (106).
- When the author is not mentioned by name, put
both the author's last name and the page number in the parentheses. Do not
put a comma in between them. For example: "Increased intake of sugar cereals among teachers has
significantly raised classroom narcolepsy" (Hardy 106).
- When there is no author, use the first word (or
first few words) of the title of the book or article (article title words
in quotations). Many people lament
the loss of quality television time to the imposition of family
interaction ("
- When there are multiple authors: Two authors: "If you think
about it, the human species produces more tin foil than plastic wrap"
(Clinton and Bush 90). Three
authors: (Clinton, Bush, and Reagan 99). More than three authors: (Clinton et al. 104.)
- Same information in two or more works: List both works in the
parenthetical citation exactly as they would be listed
individually, but separate them with a semicolon. Example: Pundits agree
that globalization will impact the future of all businesses as national
borders are breached and trade barriers are broken down, and both
eventually disappear (Friedman 42; Czinkota, Ronkainen and Tarrant 1).
- When using a quote that was already a quote in
your sources: Lou Reed told us to
"Take a walk on the wild side" (qtd. In Roller). In this
situation, the quote by Lou Reed was found by the student as a quote in a
book by Roller.
- If your information is from a full-text article
from a database or the Internet, there may be no page number. If so, use (Author n.pag.) to show that no
pagination was available.