Resources

It is important that students (and everyone), as writers, establish a certain level of trust and respect with the people reading their work. As such, we all must acknowledge when and how we use the work of others. Doing so will show that we are being academically honest and help us avoid instances of cheating or plagiarism, whether they be intentional or accidental.

NHS's School Start-Up Package says that students "are expected to think independently and work honestly. They must provide original evidence of their learning and appropriately acknowledge the work of authors. Students shall provide original evidence of their learning and achievement and appropriately acknowledge the work of others." 

To help students do this effectively, the guidelines provided on this website will be to your advantage so that you learn how to use, quote, and cite sources properly. You can always, of course, ask your teacher for guidance.

If you are ever in doubt about whether or not you should be quoting, paraphrasing, or simply citing an idea, your teacher would be happy to work with you on figuring out the solution.

However, to be on the safe side, feel free to include a citation in the form of an embedded citation, footnote, or endnote, depending on which one your class has been directed to use. It's better to be safe than sorry.

The easiest way to avoid plagiarism is to cite your sources - both within the body of your paper (embedded citations for MLA or footnotes for Chicago) and in a bibliography of sources you used at the end of your paper. 

There are lots of ways to determine if an Internet source is appropriate to use during your research. Use the tips available on the links below to help determine which sources should or should not be used. These tips would also be very helpful when writing an annotated bibliography.

• Georgetown University
• The University of Edinburgh

Plagiarism is something that no one wants to be accused of. Students will be asked at times to submit their work through Turnitin. Using Turnitin is meant as a tool for students to self-check their work before submitting a final copy of their work to a teacher for evaluation. When students submit their work to Turnitin before the due date, they can see what percentage of their work might be considered plagiarized. They then still have time to modify their work and resubmit it to lower the percentage. Teachers who use Turnitin will provide their students with the proper login information, either through the Turnitin website itself, or through the D2L platform. 

Direct quotations, the exact words someone has said, word-for-word, can be looked at in two ways. 

1. First, you could be quoting our prime minister. This is one form of direct quoting and it should be used sparingly.
2. However, you could also use the exact words of another author who has written on the subject you are researching. This, too, is a direct quote. This is the type of quotable material, which comes from secondary sources, that you will be typically be asked to use in your History course.

In either case, such quotations are always placed inside of quotation marks and a citation must be provided.

Indirect quotations occur when you simply paraphrase the thoughts or ideas of someone else. While such paraphrasing is not placed inside quotation marks, you still must provide a citation.

You must be very careful in your choices of what to quote. When conducting research for any of your course assignments, you should always be looking for appropriate quotable material. Look for material which offers more than simple descriptive or factual material.

Look for material from secondary sources that makes an argument, supports a point, or offers an opinion or perspective. Quotable material should directly support the point or argument you are making in your own writing.

For example, if you go to Why Lucy is important and read the first paragraph in the article, you will see that the last sentence could be copied and pasted as a quotation which helps support a point or argument.

There are effective and ineffective ways of incorporating quotable material into your writing. You obviously want to do this well so that your readers will take you seriously as a writer. Remember that one of the purposes of quoting material is to support your argument. As a novice researcher and writer, you are obviously going to be relying on the ideas, arguments, perspectives, or opinions of others, so give them credit directly in your writing. Avoid, then, as much as possible, stand-alone, dropped, floating, or hanging quotations. To do this, see the samples below.

1. Tabitha Marshall, who holds a PhD in military history and is the sports and biographies editor for the Canadian Encyclopedia, wrote that “Terry Fox inspired the nation and the world through his courageous struggle against cancer and his determination to raise funds for cancer research.”

2. According to Guide to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives fair rights such as being able to live, vote and work in Canada, to all Canadians.”

3. Peter Hogg, a Canadian constitutional law scholar, argues that the “Charter’s influence occurs not only through the courts, but invisibly behind the scenes, guiding the work of government lawyers and officials in designing laws and policies that are Charter-compliant.”

4. According to The Significance of the Charter in Canadian Legal History, the Charter “has changed the legal landscape in Canada since it was entrenched as Part 1 of our Constitution.”

For tips on how to incorporate these signal phrases into your writing, please see Introducing Sources or Signal or Lead-in Phrases.

1. Make sure you get the phrasing correct. A quotation should boost your credibility, but quoting inaccurately weakens your credibility. A sloppy quotation makes you look lazy.

2. Get a reliable source. Wikipedia doesn’t count. Your credibility is on the line, so be sure to be quoting well-known experts. Avoid quoting individuals based purely on their fame or success; base your decision on their expertise in the subject area you are talking about.

3. Avoid closing with a quote. Your final words should be your own. Ending with a quote is often a sign that you don’t have confidence in your own words.

4. Quotations work best in the body of your work. The best time to introduce a quote is when you need more support for one of your arguments. One particularly effective time is near the end of a section. Reinforcing your arguments with a quotation brings good closure to your argument. Therefore, do not use quotations to introduce or conclude a paragraph. You, as the writer, should be the one introducing the main idea of a paragraph and then offering a concluding comment.

5. Avoid overdoing it. There’s no rule about how many quotes you should use, but their effectiveness gets diluted if you use too many. Remember that your work should primarily be told with your words, not someone else’s. Keep just the best quotes you found in your research, and trim the others.

6. Quoted material must be integrated smoothly into your own writing. When introducing a quotation, do it in a way that allows your reader to see either its purpose (E.g.: This is the case when Smith writes… or For example, Zinn argues that…) or its source (John Smith writes in the Canadian Encyclopedia that...).

7. Do not italicize quotations.

8. Avoid putting two or more quotations back-to-back.

9. Be sure you understand how and why to use square brackets (do not use them at either the very beginning or very end of a quotation) and ellipses (do not leave any extra spaces either before, after, or in between the three periods. If you are not sure about the purpose behind or proper use of either square brackets or ellipses, be sure to ask your teacher in class.

10. Too often, a mistake students make is that they quote or cite something in their writing, but then do not record that source in the bibliography. Any source that is quoted must automatically be listed in your bibliography. Making this mistake is considered a major error.

Some of the items above can be found, with other ideas, at How to Use Quotes in Your Speech:8 Benefits and 21 Tips.

Please note that it is a major error if you use quotable material and then not record those sources as part of your bibliography.

Formatting Block Quotes:

1. Any quotations of 1-3 lines have no special formatting requirements. BUT...

2. For a quotation which is more than three lines of text in normal margins, there are special formatting instructions:

   1. separate the quotation from  the paragraph it is in;

   2. highlight the quotable text and shrink the margins by a ½ inch (or 1.25 cm) on both the right and left sides;

   3. then, single space the lines, making sure there is one empty line both before and after the quotation; and

   4. do not use quotation marks.

3. For MLA style, an embedded citation comes at the end, after the period, while in Chicago-style, a footnote number comes after the period.

1. Placement -- Normally, bibliographies are found on their own page after your paper. For your courses with Mr. Pellerin, please just skip two lines below the last paragraph of your writing and begin your bibliography.

2. Formatting -- Before you begin the bibliography section of your paper, please make these two changes: 1) change the alignment to Left and 2) change the spacing from 1.5 to 1.15. As you add to your list, leave one empty line between each bibliographic citation.

3. Title -- Include a title above your list of sources, using Bibliography or References. Do not centre this title.

4. Alphabetizing -- Do not number your list. The list must be alphabetized. Any sources that begin with a numeral go before sources that start with a letter.

5. Authors Names -- An author must be an actual person’s name...do not include something other than a person’s name for an author unless you are recording an entire website. List all authors if there are ten or less. If there is no author, you start the citation with the next component, the title.

6. Article Titles -- Insert the name of the article inside quotation marks. A period will go inside the quotation marks. If an article ends in an exclamation or question mark, no period is used.

7. Publishers and Websites:

   1. Website names are not italicized, but publishers are italicized. A comma (which is not italicized) follows the publisher, after which is the date. If there is no date available and you have to use an accessed date, the comma after the publisher is changed to a period. Be sure to see the samples below.

   2. The website name will often be found at the top of the page while the publisher will most often be found at the very bottom. When looking for the publisher, start by looking at the bottom of the page and look for the copyright symbol...the publisher is usually found right after that symbol.

   3. If the website and the publisher look to be the exact same, record it only as the publisher (italicized), not both.

8. Dates -- The date format is different from MLA. Only provide one date. If there is more than one date on a site, only use the most recent date. If no date is available at all, only then do you provide a date of access. Do not abbreviate the months. If a site only gives a year as a date, then please provide an accessed date instead of only the year.

9. Hyperlinks -- Remove all hyperlinks.

10. Matching Fonts -- When you are copying and pasting something from a website, chances are you will have to change the font, the font colour, and/or the font size to match your document. One way to paste material without formatting is to use Ctrl + Shift + V. 

11. Hanging Indents -- Format your list with hanging indents. In a Google Doc, highlight your list of sources, go to the Format tab, click on Align and Indent. Then, click on Indentation Options and then click on None and choose Hanging.

12. URL Splitting -- After completing all of the above, avoid leaving a large empty space on any of the lines simply because a url will not fully fit. If you have to, split the url at an appropriate place to fill the lines; this means splitting a url only after .com/, .org/, .edu/, .ca/, .gov/ etc. Avoid splitting a url in the middle of a word.

When you are being marked using these guidelines, your teacher will look at how many major and minor errors you have.

Minor errors would include, but are not limited to:

• punctuation errors,

• order of authors’ names,

• missing quotation marks, 

• wrong date formatting,

• improper italicization, or

• not splitting a url when appropriate 

Major errors would include, but are not limited to:

• the list not being alphabetized,

• numbering your sources,

• hanging indents not being used,

• spacing issues/problems,

• missing components, or

• mixing up the website and publisher

Bradgon, Henry W., Samuel P. McCutchen, and Donald A. Ritchie. History of a Free Nation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.

Kelly, Martin. “The Root Causes of the American Revolution." Thoughtco. Dotdash, February 18, 2020. https://www.thoughtco.com/causes-of-the-american-revolution-104860 .

Sloan, Geoffrey. “What to Read on Geopolitics.” Foreign Affairs. The Council on Foreign Relations, March 12, 2009. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/2009-03-12/what-read-geopolitics.

“Spanish-American War.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc., March 27, 2016. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish% E2%80%93American_War.

“The American Revolution - Effects.” US History 2006. Accessed October 2, 2014. http://revolutionarywar2.tripod.com/id6.html.

“William Jennings Bryan.” PBS. Accessed October 2, 2014. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/1900/peopleevents/pande34.html.

1. To create a footnote in a Google Doc:

   • put your cursor where you need to insert a footnote...the footnote goes after the quotation marks, not before, and period goes inside the quotation marks

   • go to the Insert tab and click on Footnote...Google Docs will automatically insert the footnote at the foot of the page...when you add more, Google Docs will again automatically adjust both the spacing and the footnote numbers for you

2. There are many formatting notes to keep in mind when constructing footnotes:

   • the font size of footnotes are automatically smaller than the text in your Google Doc...do not change this

   • the first time you use a source, include all relevant information about it.

   • the author’s name is not reversed as it is in a bibliography...if there are four or more authors, list the first one and follow it with the Latin phrase "et al"

   • commas instead of periods are used to separate different components of a footnote...finish with a period at the end of all notes

   • if you have to use an "accessed" date, it is not capitalized

   • hanging indents are not used for footnotes

   • avoid leaving any large empty spaces on any of the lines taken up by your footnote...if you have to, split the url at an appropriate place

3. When citing sources that have already been cited in previous footnotes:

   • if two consecutive citations/notes are the same source, the second note is simply the word “Ibid.”

   • ...if the second source uses a different page number, the corresponding note should use “Ibid.” followed by a comma and the new page number(s)

   • if you cite the same source again (but not consecutively - see sample list below), the note needs to only include the surname of the author, a shortened form of the title (if more than four words, though always the first part to allow a reader to find it easily -- alphabetically -- in the bibliography), and page number(s) if applicable)

   • this also applies if the second time you use a source happens on a different page

¹Henry W. Bradgon, Samuel P. McCutchen, and Donald A. Ritchie, History of a Free Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 378.

² Ibid., 384.

³ Martin Kelly, “Causes of the American Revolution - Colonial Mindset and Events That Led to Revolt,” Thoughtco, Dotdash, February 18, 2020, http://americanhistory.about.com/od/revolutionarywar/a/amer_revolution.htm.

⁴ “Conflict and Revolution - 1775 to 1776,” The History Place, accessed September 16, 2020, http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution/revwar-75.htm.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Kelly, “Causes of the American Revolution.