Using Evidence

Direct Copy and Pasting From Source

Another form of plagiarism occurs when an author copies entire phrases, sentences, or paragraphs from a source without citation. The use of sources in this way presents the source's ideas and phrasing as the author's own instead of giving credit to the original author. For example, here is a paragraph from Tomlinson (2008) that an author might want to use in his or her paper:

Differentiation as an instructional approach promotes a balance between a student's style and a student's ability. Differentiated instruction provides the student with options for processing and internalizing the content, and for constructing new learning in order to progress academically.

Here is an example of how an author might use quotation marks and citations to incorporate Tomlinson's (2008) information in his or her paper:

According to Tomlinson (2008), "Differentiation as an instructional approach promotes a balance between a student’s style and a student’s ability" (p. 2).

Note how the reader will be able to see easily that this sentence was borrowed from Tomlinson. However, an even better option for using Tomlinson's (2008) ideas would be for the author to only quote essential portions of the source.

Here is how an author might selectively quote Tomlinson:

According to Tomlinson (2008), differentiation in teaching helps students by giving "options for processing and internalizing the content" (p. 2).

This example is a more integrated way for an author to use a source's ideas, only quoting what is absolutely necessary. In this way, the author's voice stays dominant, with the source's voice (Tomlinson) only contributing a small portion of the sentence.