If you have a Toronto Public Library card you can access a wider selection of their databases here:
CANADIAN BUSINESS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS (CBCA)
IQ researcher
Username: Jdiklich@bayviewglen.ca
Password: 3qycXWXDtYyw7pjXH1VimA==
The BBC
The Guardian
Current History
A summary condenses information from a source; a paraphrase conveys the information using roughly the same number of words as the original source. When you summarize or paraphrase, you must name the source and restate the source's meaning in your own words.
Half copying the author's sentences by using the author's phrases in your own sentence without quotation marks or by plugging synonyms int the author's sentence structure is a form of plagiarism.
Even borrowing just a few words from an author without clearly indicating that you did so constitutes plagiarism. Moreover, you can plagiarize unintentionally; in hastily taken notes, it is easy to mistake a phrase copied from a source as your original thought and then to use it without crediting the source.
Imagine, for example, that you read the following passage in the course of your research (from Michael Agar’s book Language Shock):
Everyone uses the word language and everybody these days talks about culture. . . . “Languaculture” is a reminder, I hope, of the necessary connection between its two parts. . . .
If you wrote the following sentence, it would constitute plagiarism:
At the intersection of language and culture lies a concept that we might call “languaculture.”
This sentence borrows a word from Agar’s work without giving credit for it. Placing the term in quotation marks is insufficient. If you use the term, you must give credit to its source:
At the intersection of language and culture lies a concept that Michael Agar has called “languaculture” (60).
In this version, a reference to the original author and a parenthetical citation indicate the source of the term; a corresponding entry in your list of works cited will give your reader full information about the source.
