Medical Assisting: Why Cite Your Work?
What Must I Cite?
You do not need to cite common knowledge. For example, you do not need to cite the fact that Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States, but you would need to cite your source of information for the number of slaves he inherited from his father. In addition, it's important to distinguish between original ideas of your own and those of others. Academic honesty requires citing anything you write or create that includes the words or refers to the ideas of another person, such as:
- direct quotations
- paraphrasing of passages
- indebtedness to another person for an idea
- use of another student's work
- use of your own previous work
Academic dishonesty goes by another name: PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly
Grammarly’s plagiarism checker detects plagiarism in your text and checks for other writing issues.
Why Use a Plagiarism Checker?
You’re working on a paper and you’ve just written a line that seems kind of familiar. Did you read it somewhere while you were researching the topic? If you did, does that count as plagiarism? Now that you’re looking at it, there are a couple of other lines that you know you borrowed from somewhere. You didn’t bother with a citation at the time because you weren’t planning to keep them. But now they’re an important part of your paper. Is it still plagiarism if you’re using less than a paragraph?
Using someone else’s text without attribution is plagiarism, whether you meant to do it or not. Unintentional plagiarism of even a sentence or two can have serious consequences. For students, plagiarism often means a failing grade, academic probation, or worse. Fortunately, there is a tool that can help. Grammarly’s online plagiarism checker can help you ensure that you have properly identified and cited anything in your text that isn’t 100 percent original.