AboutDan Smith Expertise I have been a professional writer and editor for more than 30 years, taught speech and English composition at the university level, and have developed speech and English composition courses and seminars for businesses. I am experienced in editing a wide variety of materials, especially business, scientific, and other academic papers. I am familiar with all the major style guides.
Experience I have edited any number of graduate papers and other technical materials in such advanced fields as civil and electrical engineering and semiconductor fabrication. I have extensive experience in working with non-native English speakers.
Question QUESTION: If you have a report to do and you have to research articles online for it and you reword the article so that you can put it in your report so for example:"The child,running fastly,tripped.Due to the injury,the child went to the hospital.")If I reworded it to say "Running hurridly,the child tripped.This resulted to having to take the child to the hospital.",would this be okay.Would it be okay if it is in the same order and says almost the same thing,just in different wording?Would this be plagiarism?
ANSWER: Whenever you use material that belongs to someone else, you should cite the source. That way, it is not plagiarism. You should do that whether you paraphrase it or quote it.
Hope this helps.
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QUESTION: Well I reworded it.But it's still the same structure.Can you read my report so that you can judge?I don't want to turn it in if it is too much like the article.Please?
ANSWER: I told you already. Just cite your source. That removes any question of plagiarism. It's that simple. Whether you reword (paraphrase) or not, you MUST cite your source if you use ideas from someone else. Period.
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QUESTION: Well isn't that what a bibliography is for?
Answer A bibliography is just the list of the sources you have cited in your manuscript. It doesn't say where you got each idea. Citations in the text, whether by footnote, end note, in-text citation, do that. When you use another person's idea, you must show at that point in your text where you got the idea. So, when you use the idea about the child running, you must cite that source. Let's say you paraphrase something from my Website from my page "On Writing well". Your citation, at the point where you used my materiai and using the in-text citation method and assuming this is the text you are writing, would look like this (Smith, 2009).
Your bibliographic entry would look like this, if you are usin.
