Plagiarism: When to Cite to Avoid it

This post is about how to avoid plagiarism when bringing direct quotes into your writing. TLDR: if you copy and paste 3+ words from any source, just put quotation marks around it and provide a page number citation, and nobody has to have a giant headache over your work.

You definitely need to cite, with a page number, for example “(Davis 1995:4)”, IF you use any direct quotes in your writing. It is plagiarism and is a major academic offense if you include other people’s exact words in your writing and fail to cite with quotes and a page number. The most common plagiarism case I see (and I see it almost every semester) is when someone takes exact words from a reading and doesn’t put quotation marks around them and doesn’t include a page citation, even though they include the vaguer citation. 

So let’s use this passage as an example, from Davis (1995) (see the reference at the end of this guide) (the following is a direct passage from his article):
 
“Once again, both politicians and the press have allowed the essential landuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of fire suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse of natural hazards and public safety.” (this is from p.33 of his article).

So let’s then imagine you want to incorporate that idea into your writing.
 
So e.g., this is WRONG/PLAGIARISM (This is the most common form of plagiarism I see):

As Davis argues, politicians and the press have allowed the essential landuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of fire suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse of natural hazards and public safety (Davis 1995). This is the most common form of plagiarism I see, and as I said above, I see it very often. What has happened here is that there is a citation, but this text is a direct quote, so it needs quotation marks and a page number in the citation.
 
This is the CORRECT/NON-PLAGIARIZED way to deal with that last sentence:

As Davis argues, “politicians and the press have allowed the essential landuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of fire suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse of natural hazards and public safety” (Davis 1995:33).
 
This is also CORRECT:

As Davis (1993:33) argues, “politicians and the press have allowed the essential landuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of fire suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse of natural hazards and public safety”.
 
But you shouldn’t have that many direct quotes in most social science assignments. If you have like 10 or something for a term paper, that is fine. But if there are large parts of your paper that are just quoted text, that’s a problem. Usually, when I see people using a lot of direct quotes, it means they haven’t really understood a source.
 
A good general rule is if you are using 3 or more words in order from the sentence you are trying to paraphrase, then you need to quote it and put a page number in the citation.
 
So this, for example, is also WRONG/PLAGIARISM:  

As Davis (1993:33) argues, politicians and the press “have allowed the essential landuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of fire suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse of natural hazards and public safety”. It is plagiarism because "politicians and the press" should also be part of the quotation.
 
This is also WRONG/PLAGIARISM:

As Davis (1993) argues, politicians and the press have enabled the problematic land use—the rampant, uncontrolled expansion of fire neighbourhoods—to be hidden in a neutral discourse of natural risks and safety. Why is that wrong? Because in that sentence, all the person has done is changed out some of the words of the sentence—the whole sentence is clearly still basically copy and pasted.
 
Do NOT copy and paste someone else’s sentence into your writing, change a few words or rearrange the sentence a bit, and call it finished. That’s still plagiarism. The syntax is still 100% plagiarized, even if a few of the words are different.
 
A better approach: Either just use quotation marks and give a page number (really, not that hard!!!) or: read the thing you want to cite. Wait 15 seconds to 3 minutes. Then write what it said. You will likely use different words than the words the source used but will still be able to convey the idea that you want to write about. This is a method I've sometimes used for not plagiarizing, when I want to paraphrase rather than use a direct quote. When I use direct quotes, I always put quotations around the quote and provide a page number citation. This also means you have to take notes in a way where you keep the page numbers. I have a note-taking method where I always write the page numbers for direct quotes beside any such quotes in my notes. Then if I want to use a direct quote I don’t have to go back to the source, I can just use my notes.
 
Basically, write in your own words, and if you do use a direct quote, use quotation marks and give a page number. Please, save everyone a headache. Some online sources will not have a clear page number, but just do your best at an estimate of the page number or at the very least make sure to include the quotation marks and make a footnote or something indicating that there are no page numbers for this source (thus showing that you understand they should be included with direct quotes).

Avoiding plagiarism is not difficult. Please, for the sake of everyone not wasting their time, avoid it.