 What is plagiarism? Plagiarism is essentially using someone else's work as your own without giving them proper credit. Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism at USU can result in a failing grade in the course or even expulsion from the school. That doesn't mean you can't use other people's research in your writing, however. That's what academic research is all about, building on prior research. You can easily avoid plagiarizing by letting your readers know that you are citing someone else's work. There are three main ways you can incorporate someone else's work into your paper, by summarizing, paraphrasing, or direct quoting. Regardless of which path you choose, you need to include an intact citation in your paragraph to give credit to the original author. Then, at the end of your paper, you'll include a complete list of references, which is every source you've included throughout the paper. But how do you formulate a citation? Let's go over some basic strategies for citing sources in APA style. Regardless of your source type, you'll need to find and include basic information about the source, or the who, what, when, where, and your complete citation. You can often find this information on an article's record page, a book's copyright page, or by investigating the website. Let's practice by citing an article in APA format. Here is the format we need to use. And let's practice by using this article on Donald Trump and Twitter. We can find all the elements with which we need to cite this article on its record page, such as the author, which we will put last name, then first initial, then the year it was published. Next, we want to put the title of the article, but make sure you only capitalize the first letter of the first word. The journal title goes in italics. Next, you'll want to note the volume, issue, and page numbers. Finally, if you see a DOI, include that in your citation. An in-text citation for this article would look like this. Book citations are just as easy. Here's the format. You can find all the content you need on the title or copyright pages of a book, like this example from White Fragility. An in-text citation for this book would look like this. Citing web pages can be tricky. Need to ask yourself, is this an article from a newspaper like New York Times or Washington Post? A government report, such as something from the CDC or NIH? Or simply a web page on a website. Content from CNN or the World Health Organization would be included here. At the end of your paper, you'd include a list of all of your complete citations titled references. When in doubt, you can find citation help on the APA website or from Purdue OWL. Or you can always ask a librarian.