Taking notes and paraphrasing

Understanding plagiarism | Intentional and unintentional plagiarism | Consequences of plagiarism |
Avoiding plagiarism | Additional resources

The purpose of research is to take information from several sources, play with it in our own minds, and put it together in our own words, including others' quotations (where helpful) and acknowledging others' ideas. More often than not, plagiarism occurs when students try to take information from sources and stick it into their writing without first running it through their own brains. By short-circuiting the process of research, they invite disaster.

"write your notes with the book closed to ensure that you are putting the ideas into your own words"

UNC Writing Center Handout on Plagiarism

Taking notes

Taking notes on sources is a critical first step in avoiding plagiarism. Students who try to skip this step and write while they are looking directly at their sources will almost certainly plagiarize.

Instead, once we find a helpful source, we take notes on it. As the UNC Writing Center Handout on Plagiarism states, "Taking careful notes is simply the best way to avoid plagiarism." The handout continues, "try thinking about your notes as a transitional 'space' between what you've read and what you're preparing to write." Furthermore, as we can see from the quotation highlighted at the left, the UNC handout suggests that we take notes without looking at the original source.

When we read a passage in preparation for taking notes on it, we need to give ourselves time to consider what information may be helpful to us. Sometimes a source may provide more detail than we need, and we simply summarize the point of the passage (in our own words, in fragmentary form). Other times a whole passage may be important, and we need to take detailed notes on it. To do so, we read it carefully, put it aside, and then jot down relevant information from it--writing fragments rather than phrases or sentences to protect ourselves from unintentional plagiarism.

Quotations, of course, are another matter. These we should copy down exactly and put in quotation marks.

Looking up words

One of the great benefits of doing research on a topic is that we have the chance to learn words we didn't previously know. But part of good research is making sure that we know the meanings of the words we use. So when we come across a word whose meaning we don't know, we should include it in our notes--but we should look it up before we use it, and in the essay or project we produce as the result of our research, we should define or explain the word for the benefit of classmates who may not know it.

For example, let's say we are researching the life of Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, and discover that Chaucer's father was a vintner. In order to better understand Chaucer's family, we need to know that a vintner is a wine merchant, and if we use the word vintner, we should explain its meaning.

Paraphrasing

We take careful notes so that once we assimilate and process all of our information, we will write in our own words and our own sentence structures rather than in the words and sentences of our sources. That is, we will paraphrase successfully.

If it is important to look away from the original source when we take notes, it is even more important not to look at that source when we are paraphrasing. We should have our notes in front of us, not our sources--as the Online Writing Lab at Purdue notes in the quotation highlighted at the right.

"write your paraphrase and summary without looking at the original text"

OWL at Purdue University: Avoiding Plagiarism: Printable Handouts

Unsuccessful paraphrasing

To quote again from the UNC Writing Center Handout on Plagiarism, "Paraphrasing does not mean changing a word or two in someone else's sentence, changing the sentence structure while maintaining the original words, or changing a few words to synonyms. If you are tempted to rearrange a sentence in any of these ways, you are writing too close to the original. That's plagiarism, not paraphrasing." Below are some examples of this sort of unsuccessful paraphrasing.

This original sentence is taken from page 921 of Baylor's U.S. History text book, The American Pageant by Thomas Bailey, et al:

"The burly Khrushchev, seeking new propaganda laurels, was eager to meet with Eisenhower and pave the way for a 'summit conference' with Western leaders."

Changing a word or two (plagiarism)

The stocky Khrushchev, looking for new propaganda recognition opportunities, was eager to meet with President Eisenhower and to pave the way for a joint conference with leaders from the West.

Rearranging sentence structure (plagiarism)

Seeking new propaganda laurels, Khrushchev was eager to meet with Eisenhower. He wanted to pave the way for a summit conference with leaders from the West.

Quoting fewer than all of the words (plagiarism)

"Khrushchev was eager to meet with Eisenhower and pave the way for a 'summit conference' with Western leaders."

To avoid such unsuccessful paraphrasing:

Follow the process outlined above, taking careful notes and writing from your notes.
Check your work against the original text to be sure that you have not accidentally used the same phrases or words and that the information is accurate.

Also, remember that paraphrasing does not eliminate the need for giving credit for the ideas of others. Even if you paraphrase, you must attribute the material to the author and cite the source in the text at the end of the sentence.

Keeping track of sources

So that we can let readers know where we found our information, we need to be on the alert from the beginning of our research to record the necessary facts about each source. Baylor recommends (and most teachers require) that students follow the procedures established by the Modern Language Association for student research papers. We can learn those procedures by visiting the MLA website, consulting an MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (available on reserve in Hedges Library), or going to the excellent MLA summary compiled by librarian Carl Owens.
If your teacher asks you to use a different style, as the Baylor Science Department often does, then you must be careful to note what the guidelines are for citing resources using this style. At any time, if you do not understand how and what to cite or how to cite properly, ask your teacher or a librarian.

When we use a book, we need to be certain to copy down all of the information necessary to cite that book, including the page numbers of any quotations or other material that is not common knowledge. One way to make certain that we have important citation information is to photocopy the title page of the book (carefully noting the copyright date usually found on the reverse side of the front page). It is also a good idea to keep our notes and the publication information together. If we found the book in the Hedges Library, we can retrieve all necessary citation information from Athena, the library's on-line catalog.

When we use on-line resources, we also need to note where we found the information. If we are using an on-line database, we must note the name in our citation. We need the website title and address for any Internet sites we use. We must also provide the date that we visited a site. If we print out web pages, the date and web address usually appear. However, it is more effective--and less time-consuming--to copy web addresses and paste them into a document for retrieval later.

The bottom line is that we must insure that anyone wanting to check our information can return to our sources and see how we have made use of what we have read.

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