Plagiarism can be a pricey mistake, costing money, hassle, and jeopardizing your career. You want to make sure that you are properly using modern standards for documenting your sources as you write. Luckily, the APA Guide provides plenty of helpful guidelines for documenting your sources.
The Price of Plagiarism
The consequences of plagiarism can be dire. Even if you don’t intend to plagiarize another person’s work, you can put your career in jeopardy with a single mistake. You can face law suits, expulsion, and the publication of your paper can be declined, if any small part of your paper is considered plagiarized.
The APA Guide to Citation
The APA Guide helps you avoid these situations by properly citing works that you reference. Whether you’re writing a business report or preparing an academic paper, you can use the APA Guide to properly credit your sources. Because of its easy parenthetical citation format, you can quickly insert your credits in a matter of seconds.
When to Make Citations
You must cite sources for any text you are summarizing, quoting verbatim, and for any idea or theory which is not your own. For instance, if you are citing Klauswitz’s theory on “the fog of war,” you will need to quote his text (or a secondary source) in order to use that phrase in your paper. Even if you are quoting a source with which you do not agree, you still always need to include a citation for the quotation you wish to refute.