In one way, no piece of writing is entirely original. We draw ideas, information, and inspiration from other writers and thinkers. Much of our common knowledge, as well as many of our everyday beliefs and forms of speech, come from other texts and even implicitly refer to those texts. We do not expect to see a footnote every time we see or hear someone utter a phrase such as “love is not proud” or “all men are created equal.”

Academic work—in papers, speeches, and presentations—presents the results of your own reading, digesting, and analyzing of other writers’ work. Therefore, you need to be clear and honest about the relationship between these other writers’ work and your own. Academic disciplines have developed their own rules for doing just this, and you find those rules in resources such as the MLA Handbook, APA Manual, Chicago Handbook of Style, and the CSE Manual. As a college student, you are fully responsible for knowing and applying these rules in your courses.  

Indicating where your facts, ideas, and interpretations come from is called acknowledging your sources, and you cite your sources in both the text of your paper and in a works cited or reference list. If you fail to acknowledge and cite your sources fully and accurately, even if you do not intend to deceive anyone, you are effectively lying to your reader or plagiarizing.