Properly cite primary source in term paper
Regardless of whether it is a doctoral thesis or an academic term paper, if you use passages and formulations from other sources, you have to mark them. Specifying the primary source prevents you from being accused of plagiarism.
Even if it just happens by mistake, far-reaching consequences can arise: If a primary source is used but not specified, you can end up in the devil's kitchen ...
State primary source - this is how you cite correctly
- You will have to write a lot of homework at university or at school. Apart from the research effort for the housework, you also have to take care of some formal matters, for example the format templates or the correct citation. You can do a lot wrong there. All the more annoying if the housework is rejected or rated worse because of such trivialities.
- Basically, if you mention something in your work that you have taken from a source other than your own ideas, you must indicate this. Otherwise this is considered plagiarism. It used to be difficult for one or the other professor to prove such plagiarism. Today, however, there is a wide range of plagiarism software that copyists can quickly convict. Don't let it depend on it. There are two ways you can name the primary source:
- Either in a direct quote, i.e. you take the exact wording and put it in quotation marks. Then put a reference at the end of the quotation marks, ideally in the form of a footnote. There you then enter the Names of the author and the page on which the quotation can be found.
- Or you mark a section that you paraphrased from the primary source, i.e. paraphrased in your own words. Here, too, you put a footnote, but unlike the quotation footnote, write "cf." in front of the name of the author of the source. (compare).
- Now all you have to do is enter the complete primary source in your bibliography. First write the author's last name, then a comma and then the first name. Followed by a colon and a space, then put the title of the book in quotation marks. This is followed by a full stop and a space, followed by the publisher who published the book and the year. Finally, there is a point.
Specify secondary source correctly - citation instructions
Correct scientific citation follows fixed rules. When editing a ...
Get in the habit of being thorough when naming the primary sources; this will save you and your instructor some trouble!
