It's actually quite easy to avoid plagiarizing. We simply need to cite our sources when we take ideas, words, images, etc. from another source. Below is some information about citing.

Why cite?

We cite our sources for various reasons:

Citations give credit to the person whose ideas or words we're using. Whenever we use sources such as books, journals, web sites, or images in our research, we must give credit to the original author by citing the source.
Citations also give our readers the information they need to find that source again, providing an important guide to our research and writing process.
As stated above, it's the number one way to avoid plagiarizing.

Scholars use citations not only to give credit to the original creators and thinkers, but also to add strength and authority to their own work. By citing their sources, scholars are placing their work in a specific context to show where the sources “fit” within the larger conversation. Citations are also a great way to leave a trail intended to help others who may want to explore the conversation or use the sources in their own work.

In short, citations:

give credit
add strength and authority to our work
place our work in a specific context
leave a trail for others

When to cite?

We must cite whenever we use others' ideas, words, images, etc. in any type of college work (research papers, PowerPoint presentations, speeches, and more). [Note that citations are also used in the post-college world, especially by researchers and authors.] A good rule is to provide a citation for any idea or information that is not our own. We must cite things like:

direct quotations
paraphrase or summary, which is when we use our own words to express other people's ideas
reference to an obscure fact, figure, or phrase
images, graphs, and data

Exceptions: when we don't need to cite

We don't need to cite our own ideas or findings. We can simply state these as our own.
We don't need to cite overviews that can be found in multiple sources. If multiple sources provide the same information about a historical event, we may summarize them all without a citation.
- Example: On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped a bomb named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. (No citation is needed because this information can be found in most sources that talk about the bombings in Japan during World War 2.)
However, if you find information specific to one source, be sure to cite it!
- Example: A 2015 Pew Research poll "found that the numbers of people who thought the bombings were justified had dropped in both America and Japan — to 56 percent among Americans and just 14 percent among Japanese." (The source for this quote is an article in the online version of The Washington Post, and must be cited properly.)
We don't need to cite "common knowledge," which means knowledge that most people would know without having to look it up. No knowledge is known to everyone in every culture, but some information is widely known and therefore doesn't need to be cited. An example is "The summer Olympics are held every four years." This kind of information is not particular to an individual scholar's research.

How to cite?

In research papers, we place brief information about the source into the text using parentheses (see Ballantin 145 in the image below). This is called an in-text citation (also sometimes called a parenthetical citation). Then we include the full citation (also called a bibliographic citation) at the end of the paper in a Bibliography or list of Works Cited or References. The image below shows both parts. Note that the bibliographic citation starts with the author's last name, Ballantin, which is also the information we include in the in-text citation.

Image of in-text citation with corresponding bibliographic citation

(IRIS 4-2)

However, it's important to remember that different academic disciplines use different citation styles. Luckily, every citation style has a published manual that explains in great detail how to cite sources using that particular style. Though we may need to consult one of these manuals (we can find them in the library) at some point in college, unless we are writing something that will be published as a book or journal article, these manuals probably have more information than we need. The library has taken the most relevant information from these manuals and condensed it in a guide on citation styles.

All information on this page is adapted from the following source except where otherwise noted.

"Citing Your Sources: The Basics Canvas Module" by Seattle Central College Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

IRIS 4-2 image source: Copyright (c) 2008 IRIS 4-2 Washington State E-Learning Council. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the IRIS 4-2 Open Publication License (the latest version is presently available at http://www.clark.edu/Library/iris/index.php/general/opl.php) and TILT Open Publication License (the latest version is presently available at http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/yourtilt/).