Information About Plagiarism
Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic, Reference Librarian

1. Established facts, i.e. things that are common knowledge, don't need citations. Statements like "The sky is blue" or "England is in Europe" need not be cited.
2. Your own opinion does not need to be cited. For example: "Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist that ever wrote in the English language."
3. If you did not think it up and it is not a historical fact then it needs to be cited.
4. Any opinions, criticisms, or items of original research that are NOT YOUR OWN need to be cited. This is true whether you use a direct quote or even if you change the wording.
5. If you use an idea from an article or a book, even if you reword that idea, you must cite it.
6. Information taken from the World Wide Web needs to be cited just the same as information from an article or a book.
7. When in doubt, cite the material. It is good scholarship to do so.
8. The original theories, ideas, and research that your professor shares with you in class needs to be cited even if it is not officially published unless your professor gives you express permission to use it.
9. Factual information that comes from research needs to be cited. An example of this would be statistics. "How many people die each year in the United States from a heart attack?" The answer to this is a fact that needs to be cited. Someone had to research it to come up with the answer.

For more information on how to cite a book, article, information from the Web, interviews, class notes, etc. please visit How to Cite a Source.

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