On Citing Sources: What's Acceptable & What's Not
Some of the following examples of quotation and paraphrase are acceptable, some not. Please study them carefully.
1. Direct quotation, documented. Acceptable.
In "The Stationary Tourist," Paul Fussell contends that tourism "began more than a century ago, in England [when] the unwholesomeness of England's great soot-caked cities made any place abroad . . . appear almost mystically salubrious, especially in an age of rampant tuberculosis" (Fussell 420).
2. Quotation without quotation marks. Unacceptable even though documented.
The English considered foreign travel almost mystically salubrious, according to Fussell.
3. Partial paraphrase, documented, with the brief quotation properly identified. Acceptable.
The English considered foreign travel "almost mystically salubrious," according to Fussell (Fussell 420).
4. Half-baked paraphrase: the original with a few words changed around. Unacceptable even though documented.
Tourism started more than a century ago in England. The great soot-caked cities were so unwholesome that any place abroad seemed almost mystically healthful by comparison (Fussell 420).
5. Complete paraphrase, documented. Acceptable.
Paul Fussell believes tourism grew out of nineteenth-century industrial squalor: cities became so dirty and unhealthy that people took vacations abroad to escape (Fussell 420).
6. Paraphrase, undocumented. Unacceptable.
Tourism grew out of nineteenth-century industrial squalor: cities became so dirty and unhealthy that people took vacations abroad to escape.
[Extract from Professor Philip Oldenburg's handout in G6465, Columbia University (itself an edited reproduction of "How To Avoid Plagiarism," Department of English, Lafayette College.)]