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Avoiding Plagiarism

Citing Direct Quotations

The author of an article on the industrial revolution expressed a key idea concisely and beautifully. You're discussing a passage from Mark Twain, and want to analyze several sentences in detail. There are lots of reasons to use direct quotations – the exact words of an author or other source - in your scholarly work. Quotations can spice up a paper, tie your thoughts to a text, and provide concrete examples of what you're talking about. They always need to be documented with full citations.

  • You should use direct quotations sparingly, choosing them carefully to make an impression. A paper composed mostly of quotations from other authors runs in to the plagiarism risk called 'patchworking' (discussed later in this tutorial).

  • A quotation can be very short – one or two words, such as a reference to another author's special way of naming a phenomenon – or an entire paragraph or passage, which you then proceed to discuss at length.

  • If you are quoting a long passage, most style guides will suggest that you indent the quotation, setting it apart from the paragraph in which you analyze the quotation.

Examples of Direct Quotation:

CSE Style
Original

Considering all the evidence together, it is reasonable to hypothesize that Homo evolved to travel long distances by both walking and running.

Bramble DM, Lieberman DE. 2004. Endurance running and the evolution of Homo. Nature 438:345-52.
Quotation

Bramble and Lieberman posit that “it is reasonable to hypothesize that Homo evolved to travel long distances by both walking and running” (2004).

APA Style
Original

In the current paper we will be examining responses to a particular type of imposter; the vegetarian who eats meat. We chose this example because the core norm of the vegetarian is very clear (to not eat meat), and violation of the norm is easily recognized.

Hornsey, M.J. & Jetten, J. (2003). Not being what you claim to be: impostors as

sources of group threat. [Electronic version] European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 639-657.

Quotation

Hornsey and Jetten (2003) investigated responses to impostors. They defined impostors, in this case, as meat-eating vegetarians. They “chose this example because the core norm of the vegetarian is very clear (to not eat meat), and violation of the norm is easily recognized” (p. 641).

MLA Style
Original

The women in The Sopranos are, without a doubt, at least as deadly as the males – in some cases, literally, in other cases metaphorically. Livia, Carmela, Dr. Melfi, and Janice are more dangerous than Junior, Tony, Christopher, and Paulie because the women commandeer power while seeming to wield none. The evidence of their powers of destruction is more easily disguised. In other words, while the women might stoop to conquer, they do eventually and efficiently conquer their enemies.

Barreca, Regina. “Why I Like the Women in The Sopranos.” A Sitdown with the

Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV’s Most Talked-About

Series. Ed. Regina Barreca. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 27-46.

Quotation

According to Barreca, “the women in The Sopranos are, without a doubt, at least as deadly as the males – in some cases, literally, in other cases metaphorically. Livia, Carmela, Dr. Melfi, and Janice are more dangerous than Junior, Tony, Christopher, and Paulie because the women commandeer power while seeming to wield none” (37).