Help with citations please.

I’m writing a paper for Criminal Justice 100 and I need to make sure I don’t plagiarize. I have some questions:

  1. I tried to paraphrase out of an article I read but the words are still too similar, so I put them in quotation marks. Is this ok? Is this plagiarism? I have an in-text citation and a reference but I just want to be sure that this is ok.
  2. Is it bad if almost everything I write is in quotations? I just want to be safe that I don’t plagiarize.

I’d suggest going to the college writing center. A whole paper made up of quotes is not going to go over well. It’s a positive that you want to avoid plagiarizing, though.

Do you have to use a certain style such as APA style? Purdue Owl has a lot of style resources and advice for dealing with the issues you are asking about.

yes, check out Purdue OWL but I agree, go to your local writing center at your college.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html