Don’t plagiarize! How to cite correctly in academic writing

Hello. My name is Emma, and today we have a very important lesson for you. This lesson

is very important if you are in school, including

high school, university, or college, or if

you are thinking of going to school, especially

in a Western country or an English-speaking

country. So, today we are going to talk about

plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very serious topic

that can have a lot of consequences if you plagiarize, whether you do it accidentally

or intentionally. So, today, first of all, I will explain what plagiarism is, and I'm

going to teach you how to avoid plagiarism by using something called a citation, or by

citing something. So, the definition of plagiarism,

this is how you pronounce it, "play-jer-ism",

plagiarism, and we have our "ism", which is pronounced like "ism". Plagiarism is simply

when you write or say something, especially in

an academic situation or a research workplace,

and you use or talk about or write about someone

else's words, their ideas, their research,

their work, but you don't give proper credit.

So, what does that mean? What do I mean by proper

credit? Well, in Western colleges and universities

and workplaces, when you take somebody else's

ideas or when you talk about someone else's

ideas or write about someone else's research

or ideas, there's a very specific way to give

credit, and the reason we need to give credit

is we need to show when we are talking about

our ideas and when we are talking about someone

else's ideas. Alright, so if you want to be successful in university or high school or

college, you must learn about plagiarism, how

to avoid it, and how to cite correctly. So,

I'm going to demonstrate this just so you understand more about citations and what

we mean by that. If you look at the first

sentence, it says, "Across studies, evidence

suggests that screen media plays little role in

mental health concerns." If you don't understand

what this means, that's okay. Even if you don't

understand all the words in this sentence,

that's okay. What I want to point out is, I've

just written this. Imagine if I wrote this in

an essay. It sounds good, but there's a really

big problem. The big problem is, I did not do

this research. These are not my words. Actually,

these are the words of the person who actually

did the research. It's actually a direct quote.

So, if I wrote this in an essay and I just left

it like this, that would be plagiarism, and I

could get expelled or fail my class or, you know,

get a zero on this paper. So, what I need to

do is I need to show that this is not my idea,

this is not my research. Maybe I use this to

support an idea in an essay I'm writing. I'm

making an argument and I want to use other

people's research and idea, that's okay, but I

just need to give credit properly. So, how can I

do this? Well, I've given a second example of how

I would give credit for this idea or research.

What I've written is "according to". So, "according

to" is very common in writing, especially

university and college writing. We use it a lot

to show we are giving credit to someone for

their ideas or their research. So, according to

Ferguson 8 or Ferguson et al, you might... We'll

talk about this in a moment because that might

be strange for you, but who is the person whose

idea this is? Ferguson is the last name of a

scientist who wrote a paper on this topic.

Ferguson and his colleagues or her colleagues

are the ones who actually did this research and this is... These are their words.

In academia, when we use "et" space "al", that

means that there are other writers or other people,

other authors on a paper, so... Or in a book. So,

imagine there's a book, there are three authors

who wrote the book. Instead of writing each of

their last names, I can just write "et" and "al"

with a dot, and that means that, okay, Ferguson

is the first author, there's some other authors,

and if you want to know who these other authors

are, you can look in the reference pages or the

bibliography of the essay I'm writing or whatever

I'm writing. And I'll show you that in a moment.

Most importantly, we have our signal statement

"according to", we have the author, their last

name, not their first name, just their last name,

and we also have the year they wrote this. So,

this is actually from an article in a journal and

pretty much they're talking about social media

and smartphones and whether or not it leads to

mental health problems. So, they wrote about this

in 2022, so in my... What I've written, I've

written a date, and then I've also changed the

wording. So, you'll see here it says "across

studies, evidence suggests that screen media

plays little role in mental health concerns."

This is actually a direct quote. So, these are

actually the words of Ferguson et al. and the

other authors. I've actually changed this and

put it into my own words. So, I've changed it

to "screen time has limited influence on mental

health issues." So, now what do I have here? This

is called an in-text citation. So, I have cited

or I've given credit to the person whose research

or idea I am using. And again, there's many

different ways to do a citation, and we'll talk

more about the different styles in a moment.

But first, I just wanted to use the same sentence

and show you some other options on how I could

write this. So, you'll notice what I've done

is I took Ferguson and the other authors or

et al. I took their sentence "across studies,

evidence suggests that screen media plays little

role in mental health concerns." And I added

quotation marks. So, I added... We call this

the 66 because it looks like when you type it.

And over here, we have the end quotation marks,

or they kind of look like little nines. So, we have our quotation marks here,

which means that these are the actual words somebody wrote or said. They have not been

changed in any way. We've taken them directly

from the article or book, and we haven't changed

anything. So, we're saying Ferguson and the other

authors' exact words. So, we've put these quotes

there. But you'll also notice at the very end,

I've added an in-text citation. What have I done?

Well, I have the name of the author at the end

of the sentence. I have et al because there's

multiple authors. I have a comma. I have the year

it was written. And in this case, because I'm

giving specific exact words, I'm actually going

to give a page number. So, this can be found on

page 205 of this journal article. So, this is a specific style of giving a citation.

There are many different ways to cite something,

and different fields have different styles or

methods to cite. This method is known as APA,

and it's often used in things like psychology,

education, social sciences, and many other fields.

There are other schools like MLA or Chicago-style

or, you know, I think physics has its own field

for citation. So, there's different ways to cite.

When you are in high school or university, your

teacher or professor will tell you how to do the

citation. They'll tell you if you should do

APA-style, MLA, Chicago-style, and then you just

follow the style guides for that. But just to go

back a moment, this is another example on how to

a citation. We have a third example here.

So, this is, again, all the same information.

Now, what I'm doing here is I've started the sentence with the name of the author,

and again, we have E-T-A-L because that means

there's other authors. We have the year,

and then I have a verb, found. So, Ferguson et

al., 2022, found that, and then this sentence

is the same as this, except I've changed the

words. So, the meaning is the same, but using my

own words, I've paraphrased. I've changed the

words a little bit so they keep the same meaning,

but we're using different words. So, for example,

I've used the word "screen time" instead of "screen

media." I said "has little influence" instead of

"plays a little role," and then "mental health

concerns," I've changed to "mental health issues."

So, it's the same information, same ideas, but

I've changed the words a little bit. And because

I've changed the words, there's no quotations.

We don't have our 66 or 99 or beginning and quotation marks. And just to be clear,

this is not actually a 66; it just looks like a

66. On your computer, you can see actual quotation

marks. So, at the beginning of a sentence, they

look like this; at the end of the sentence,

they look like that. All right, so we've talked

more about citations. The most important thing

is when you're writing something and it's not your

idea or it's not your research or you've used a

book and you've taken something from that book

or that newspaper or that website and you did not

create it, what you need to do is you need to

give credit. By that, you need to make sure you

have the name of who did write it, the year it was

written. Sometimes you'll need the page number,

especially if you are quoting something. If you're

not quoting, sometimes you don't need a page

number. And then at the very end of whatever

you're writing, you need to have a page where you

have the full information of the source. So, that

might be a bibliography, it might be called a

reference page or a works cited page. It depends

on if you're using APA, MLA, Chicago style,

they call these things different. But essentially,

what it is is you have the name of the author,

the year it was written, you know, the source,

what journal it's in. You might have the name

of the publisher. So, it, again, depends on

the style. So, you want to avoid plagiarism.

So, we talked about citations and how it's very

important to give credit for other people's

research ideas or just whenever you take something

from a book or a newspaper or even, you know,

a video, you need to give credit to who actually

created or came up with this idea or research.

So, when we do that, we call that a citation.

We call it a citation when we do this in an

academic way. And citations are necessary for

university, college, high school, or even in

the workplace. So, when you are giving credit,

there's two things you must do. The first thing

is you can do something called a signal phrase

or an in-text citation. And that's where we,

a signal phrase is when we have sentences like

"according to Schwarzenegger", "according to

Smith". We might also use different verbs,

"Schwarzenegger found", "Schwarzenegger suggests".

So, these are what we call signal phrases. And

so, when we cite, we often use a signal phrase,

and it just tells people, "Hey, this is not my idea. This is this person's idea."

Or, "This is this person's research." So, you'll see this a lot in academic writing.

We also have something called an in-text citation, and that's usually where you have

the author's name or last name, the author's last

name, and the year if it's APA, or the author's

last name, and a page number if it's MLA. And

again, there could be some other situations,

like if you use a website, but we're just going to keep things simpler for now.

And then, we have to include in anything we

write, or even presentations, our bibliographic

citation. So, what that is, is at the very end

of whatever you're writing, or at the very end

of your presentation, you need to have a page,

and depending on if you're using MLA, APA,

or a different style, you have, you know, the reference page, or the bibliography,

or the works cited page, and you have to write all

the information about the author and the source,

such as, you know, the year it was published, where it was published,

the pages that, you know, you've taken from. So, we'll show some examples of that.

So, now, let's look at a couple of examples of signal phrases and in-text citations.

So, let me give you an example of each of the

things I just mentioned. Imagine I'm writing

a paper, and I want to show exercise helps our

mental health. We feel happier when we exercise.

Now, I want to support this with research. So, I look through the research, and I find

somebody's written a paper on this. Their name... Their names are Johnson and Pink,

or at least that's their last name. So, I want

to write this in my essay. So, how do I do that?

Well, the research is not my research. I need to

give credit to the people who did the research.

So, I can do this by doing two things. First,

I can either use a signal phrase or an in-text

citation in my essay, and then at the end of my

essay, I need to do a bibliographic citation.

So, just an example of what a signal phrase would

look like, I could write... And I'm going to use

APA here. Again, that's just one style, but just to show you an APA, I could write

the name... Last names of the author, the year

they wrote their article. So, Johnson and Pink,

bracket 2011, close bracket, found that

exercise significantly improved mental health.

So, again, this part, I've used my own words,

and I've also used a verb here. So, I put the authors first.

I put a verb here. I could also say "suggest"

or "suggested", "indicated", "discovered".

"Found" is a very common one we use when we're doing citations.

I could also have written "According to Johnson and Pink, 2011,

exercise significantly improved mental health."

So, that would have been possible, too.

So, that's an example of a signal phrase. Again,

by writing the names of the author and the year,

you're showing, "Hey, this is whose idea or research this is. It's not mine."

You can also do what's called an "in-text citation" where you just write the person's

ideas or research, and then at the end, in

brackets, you write their last name and the year.

So, for example, "Exercise significantly

improves mental health. Where did I get this?

Well, from Johnson and Pink, 2011." So, again, you can choose between these.

You can either do the signal phrase approach or

you can do the in-text citation like this where

it's just at the end, but the main thing is you need to show whose idea it is.

And then, the second thing you must do is, again, have a bibliographic citation page.

So, that might be called a reference page or a

works cited page, but at the end, you need to

write the full information about who these people

are, you know, where is this information found,

what is the journal article or the news source

or the website. And so, here is an example of

what this would look like on a reference page.

This would be the bibliographic citation.

So, I've given you so much information, and I

want to say that this can be really confusing.

I had a lot of difficulty with this when I was

in high school, and I had to really spend some

time thinking about it, seeing examples, and

reading about citations in order to do them

properly. So, you might actually have to

re-watch this video, and that's completely fine.

You know, the first time, you might think a lot

about what I said, and then you might re-watch

it, and then things might make more sense.

You can also check out the Purdue OWL website.

Purdue OWL is a website from a university, and

they have so much information about how to cite,

how to avoid plagiarism, and so, you know, it's

really worth checking out, especially if you are

an international student or any student, for

that matter, going to a Western university.

It's a really good idea and a great resource.

So, what I wanted to talk about now is that

sometimes you actually don't need to provide a

citation. We've spent a lot of time talking about

what a citation is, how to avoid plagiarism,

but sometimes when you're writing, you might

write a sentence, and you actually don't need to

cite it. So, I'm going to give you some examples

of this. So, when you're writing about common

knowledge, and by common knowledge, we mean

something that most people know. So, for example,

there are five oceans. Toronto is in Canada.

These are examples of common knowledge. The capital of the USA is Washington, D.C.

Again, an example of common knowledge. You do

not need to write a citation when you are giving

common knowledge. When you're talking about your personal experience,

you do not need to give a citation. So, by that,

I mean if I'm writing an essay and I wrote,

"I was born in Toronto", I don't need to write a

citation because this is my own life experience.

Another time you do not need to write a citation

is when you are giving a historical fact,

especially, for example, if you're just talking

about dates or places, and it's a well-known

historical fact. So, for example, World War II

ended in 1945. I don't need to write a citation

for that because if you ask most people, they know

this information. So, understanding or using...

You don't need a citation for most historical

facts, but if we're giving somebody's opinion

on a historical fact, then we might use a citation. So, again, you can check out the

Purdue OWL website to see more of these types

of exceptions and to really understand this more

in-depth. But the main point is if you don't

know whether or not you should write a citation,

if you aren't sure, do the citation. It's

always better to be safer than sorry because

if you don't cite something and you should have,

you might be accused of plagiarism. Remember,

plagiarism is when you take somebody else's

words or ideas or work and you don't give proper

credit. And in academic universities or

colleges or high schools, if you plagiarize,

it's serious. You could fail your course, you

could get expelled. So, if you're not sure,

the first step is talk to somebody who knows

about this stuff. You know, maybe ask your

professor. Maybe there's a writing centre at your

school where you can talk about these things.

You can check out different websites on it. But if

you still don't know, it's always better to cite

than not to cite if you're unsure. So, thank you

so much for watching today. We covered a lot.

Thanks again for your patience. And you got this. I know it's hard, but with practice,

you can cite and you can cite well. So, I

recommend, remember, practice makes perfect.

And like Arnold Schwarzenegger said, there

are no shortcuts, only reps, reps, reps. So,

why not come to our website at www.engvid.com,

and there you can actually take a quiz to practice

citing things and to practice what you learned

today. You can also check out my YouTube channel

and subscribe in order to see a lot of other

content on academic English, how to listen to

lectures, how to read those big university textbooks, and so much more. So, thank you

so much for watching, and until next time, take care.