BBCHS English Department

Documenting Sources

Every time you borrow the words, facts, or ideas of others, you must acknowledge the source in your research paper so that the reader knows you borrowed the material and where you borrowed it from. If you don’t acknowledge your sources, you are committing plagiarism, or stealing another person’s work. It is considered a form of cheating and will ruin your paper and your grade.

You must not only acknowledge direct quotations, but also ideas and facts that you paraphrased and summarized from others. You do not need to acknowledge your own ideas or things that are considered common knowledge, such as well known scientific and historical facts, when they are expressed in your own words.

When you document sources within your paper, use parenthetical documentation. In this method, you enclose a brief note in parentheses within the paper itself. This note, called a parenthetical citation, usually includes the author’s last name and page number.

Example:

The courts and state governments are helping to fight child abuse. All fifty states have laws requiring medical practitioners to report suspected cases of abuse or neglect. Virtually every state provides immunity from legal action for physicians (Irwin 32). Many states ask nurses, teachers, the clergy, and police to report child abuse. Each year, family courts separate about 150,000 children from abusing parents (Irwin 41).