This page helps explain when and how you should give credit when you are writing anything, including anything on a web page, that has someone else's ideas or quotes.

How to give credit when writing or publishing on the Web.

You give credit to someone else when some else has written, photographed, made artistically, or said something you want to use. In other words- tell people that it was that other person’s idea, or words or image that you are using.

While we'll deal mainly with words here, this also applies to images, music, videos, etc. For instance, if I said that I came up with “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, you might think – 'hmmm…didn’t William Shakespeare come up with that?'  And you would be right. He did and I did not.

But I could still use his words when I write about something. I just have to give him credit. The fact that he is dead has nothing to do with it- live people and dead people should be given credit when you use their words or ideas. Wouldn’t you want to be given credit for something you came up with?

Plagiarism is when you steal, borrow, or copy (or buy) someone else’s work and say it is your own work. If you lie about someone else's work being your own, or do not give credit, no-one will believe other things you write, and if you are handing in work at school, you will lose some or all of your marks!

Below are things you need to give credit for:

• “Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
• When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media”

  (Source: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/02/ )

Did you see that I noted the web site from which I took the text above, and that I put quotation marks on each end of the text I took? (I marked teh quotation marks in red only to help show them to you; normally you would not colour them!) The source tells you where the words came from and the quotation marks show you which are those of the author of that website. The same thing applies to books, movies, music, etcetera.

There are times when you use someone else’s words or ideas but you put them in your own words. This is called paraphrasing. In the next paragraph I use another person’s ideas about when you do not need to give credit. However, since they are the other person’s ideas, I have actually given them credit by naming the web site and page!

 For instance, from the Owl web site mentioned above, they mention that you do not need to give credit if the ideas and thoughts are your own, or your own experiences, or if you are using photographs or artwork that you produced. You also do not need to give credit for things that are “common knowledge” (such as the fact that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West), or for things like urban legends, things that have happened in history, myths or common sense. You also do not need to give credit when you mention things that pretty much everyone knows. For instance, “pollution is bad”, is a commonly accepted fact.

 (Source:  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/02/)

The paragraph I wrote above, took all the points that the author of the web site had written, and I re-wrote them, or “paraphrased” them. They are not my thoughts even though I used my own words to express their thoughts. So, I have noted the source, the web site. This all applies to books, magazines, movies, or any other media of course!

Sometimes you have several sources on one page. You can list (or “cite”, pronounced “site”) the source one at a time as I did above, or you can cite a source in a “footnote”. A footnote is a small note at the bottom of a page with a number that is the same as a number you would put in brackets at the end of text that you ae "citing".

It looks like this:

            “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” (1)
___________________________________________________________________________

(1) – Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Computers

 

And finally, just to be precise, these: “  “ , are not “Quotes”. They are “quotation marks”. A quote is what Steve Jobs saids and the quote is in between the quotation marks!