Hi… I’ll be starting IB soon from CBSE, so I’m pretty new to the concept of citing references and the definition of plagiarism/
I’ve written out a few reports, but I’m not sure what qualifies as common knowledge, and what needs to be cited. Can you please tell me?- (I would like to mention that I did not copy anything word-to-word…these are just general statements)
- Famous Shakespeare quote in Hamlet- ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘To thine own self be true’
- The fact that JK Rowling’s books were rejected 12 times
- Malala Yousafzai being shot in the head, her fight against the Taliban, her famous line “How dare the Taliban take away my education?”
4)Thomas Edison having invented the light bulb and a few other notable inventions
- The fact that Rick Riordan wrote Percy Jackson
I understand that there is no relation between these questions, but I’ve written out several essays.
Can you please give me some inputs? I’m extremely confused.
This has nothing to do with college admissions.
I understand that, but I couldn’t find any other place to put it. Now can someone please give me proper feedback?
“High School Life,” I’d assume.
Anyway if you knew it already then there’s probably no need to cite. The only case where I would cite anyway would be if it’s an obscure fact that most other people don’t know.
Attaching authors’ names to books never needs to be cited.
As bodangles said you don’t need to cite where you learned who the author of the book was. Simply reference that the author is the author at some point in your first paragraph.
2 and 3 I would cite sources. Always better to be safe than sorry.
4 is common knowledge so no
4 is common knowledge, 5 is just a general fact, 2 requires citation, and 1 is just a quote extraction. Can’t say much about 3.
@DarkEclipse We commonly talk about non-admissions related thing here.
@Cosmological Before it was moved here, this thread was originally in the College Admissions forum.
Dun dun dun.
Oh… and one more thing
Is the fact that poor countries have high dropout rates of high school students, and low enrollment rates into colleges common knowledge?
(No specific country or statistics, just a general statement)
Sorry if this all seems very random, but I’m trying to form some opinions about this topic.
Maybe the best plan is to treat everything that is not your own work as something that needs attribution. That’s how I sort of think about it.
I would consider that an unproven assertion if you don’t back it up. That’s the kind of thing for which I, as a reader, want to see facts.
The amount of citation you do also depends on the type of writing assignment. If you are writing an actual term paper, then citing references for facts that are not commonly-known is expected. If you are just writing a one or two page reaction to this week’s reading, then you could mention issues of low educational attainment in developing countries without a need for a specific reference.
@DarkEclipse Oops, sorry.
Thanks for your replies. I am writing reports for high school contests.
Just one more thing- the year in which an american state made schooling compulsory. Should this be cited?
Yes, cite that fact but BTW don’t use wikipedia as your reference.
@CheddarcheeseMN- I understand why we shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a reference. But what if a fact on wiki isn’t cited? (I’ve seen it several times before). Would it be all right to cite it then?
No; Wikipedia is hardly the bastion of correctly used citations.
@skieurope Ok then…let’s use an example:
Thomas Alva Edison was commonly called ‘addled’ in his school life, by his teachers. This is stated in wikipedia, but has no reference. However, some call this ‘common knowledge’. What do you think of this? Is it all right to cite wikipedia in this case?