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AFRS 100: Black Studies and Culture

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using facts or ideas from another source without attribution, thereby presenting it as original work.

Adapted from CSUN Policies and Procedures

 

Best Practices to Avoid Plagiarism:

Adapted from: Vega García, S.A. (2012). Understanding plagiarism: Information literacy guide. Iowa State University. Retrieved  from http://instr.iastate.libguides.com/content.php?pid=10314. [Accessed February 8, 2018]

Citation Managers

Citation managers are software that keep track of your sources and automatically format your citations in a variety of styles.

  • EndNote Web - free to CSUN students, staff, and faculty; integrates with MS Word and any browser; can export references directly from many databases
  • Zotero - free to anyone; integrates with MS Word and/or Google Docs; must be installed on your own computer 

MLA Style Guides, 8th edition

The Modern Language Association (MLA) citation style is most common in the humanities.  The eighth edition is new for 2016.

MLA Formatting and Style Guide from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University

Citing Archival Materials in MLA

 

APA Style Guides, 7th edition

View the APA Style website for additional style and grammar guidelines.

Basic APA Formatting Guidelines 

  • Reference list entries are alphabetized by author’s last name or equivalent.
  • Reference lists are doubled spaced with a hanging indent after the first line of each entry
  • References (in bold) should appear at the top center of the page.
  • When referring to books, chapters, articles, or webpage titles, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns
  • Cite up to the first 20 authors. Separate the authors name with a comma, and place the & symbol prior to the last name. 
    • Example: Last, F. M., Last, F. M., & Last, F. M.
  • In-text citations are placed directly after the quote or paraphrase. Information needed: (Author's Last Name, Year, page number). 
    • Parenthetical citation: “Direct quote” (Furlong, 2015, p.25).
    • Narrative citation, if the author is mentioned in the sentence, place the year after the last name and the page number after the quote. Example: Furlong (2015) found that “direct quote” (p. 25)
  • More guidelines can be found in the PDF Style Guide, citing in APA 7th edition

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