National History Day
Create Your Own History: How to Credit Sources

There is never an excuse to copy someone else's work. It's plagiarism. It's illegal. Plagiarizing another person's work can cost you a grade or keep you out of the college or university—or job—that you want. Avoid problems from the start and credit your sources, even if your assignment doesn't require research or documentation.

When using someone's exact words—it doesn't matter how many—put those words in quotation marks.

When using another person's ideas—even if you paraphrase—it is your responsibility to give credit to the person who originated the words or ideas.

If you're not sure how to credit the source, check with your instructor.

Another way you can get this information is through a Style Manual. There are many on the market.

Or you can check out the following websites:

Darmouth College provides a great website with information on how to handle a wide variety of resources and styles, including those for crediting websites, newspaper and magazine articles, books B the whole gamut of sources.

Columbia University Press shows how to handle citations, documenting sources within the text, preparing a bibliography and how to credit a wide variety of online sources, including discussion groups, websites, software programs and online databases.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a Sample Bibliography Style Guide for Electronic Sources. For non-electronic sources, the website refers writers to Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. This book is available for purchase at any bookstore, can be borrowed from any teacher or is in every library. If it's in the middle of the night, and your paper is due the next morning, it's also online: Documentation Guide - Turabian.

Should things get tricky, and your teacher wants a certain citation style, check out Owens Library site at Northwest Missouri State University. You can click on the style and then further narrow your search by what type of citation you need—publication, footnote, cyberspace, etc.

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