Saturday, 1 December 2012

No. 5 Plagiarism and Referencing



If you have never heard of these two words before, don’t panic it is very normal. I have recently only come across these words myself, and for most, it is in the first week of starting college which I won’t lie was terrifying.

After getting over the first week it all seemed to sink in and these two words ‘Plagiarism and referencing’ sounded normal. I will now answer some of the most frequently asked questions about plagiarism and referencing that I too asked and hope you have a better understanding.

What does it mean?

Firstly Plagiarism in simple words is stealing the ideas or words from another person and using those as your own. This could be for instance; coping a video, image or music. If you wish to use an image or quote from another person, you then must Reference that information which in other words is showing where you got your source of information or ideas from using a bibliography.

When do I use it?

When you are researching your topic you will come across books, websites, pictures, quotes which are all owned by someone else and is not your writing so therefore you must put a referencing bibliography at the end of each essay or piece where you have used another person’s word.

How do I reference correctly?

When we learnt about referencing we were given many guidelines on how to reference; books, websites, articles using Harvard style referencing but as my sister has just finished college she had gone through all the stresses of referencing until she came about a website called ‘Neil’s tool box’ which is a referencing site which orders your reference Harvard style. Trust me I highly recommend it for any new student going into to the college world it will save a lot of time and stress which is not needed. Here’s an example of a Harvard style reference from this site;
Book= lifelines 2nd edition

Reference= Enright,C and Flynn,M (2010). Lifelines. 2nd ed. Dublin: Folens publishers. p24.

Happy Referencing!


bibliography-creator/http://Dorthman,D. (2006). Comic:Internet, info literacy,plagiarism. Available: http://davidrothman.net/category/information-literacy/. Last accessed 1st dec 2012.neilstoolbox.com/ visited 2012-11-19


No comments:

Post a Comment