Dont Listen to the Village Idiot

Definition:
1.capable of being believed; believable: a
credible statement.
2.worthy of belief or confidence; trustworthy:
a credible witness.

Credibility is important!
If your research is flawed, so is your argument.
If you use credible sources, you can believe them,
and your readers can believe you.

Most books you find in library nonfiction are credible.

Most large newspapers are credible.
New York Times
Charlotte Observer
Washington Post

Scholarly journals are usually credible.

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

Most government publications are credible.

Reputable organizations are usually credible.
American Cancer Society
World Health Organization
American Red Cross

Most information from colleges is credible.

.edu websites

You can automatically rule out:

Wikipedia
Myspace
Geocities
Blogs
Friendster
Personal sites

The internet offers the BEST information on

MANY topics.

The internet offers the WORST information

on MOST topics.

You can use internet resources for research

papers, but you have to be careful.

Ways to tell a credible internet source:

Looks professional
The website doesnt look like it was made by a 4year-old with a crayon
All or most links are working

Information offered is easy to verify

The website offers links to where they found their
information
The sources of their information is also credible

 It is easy to contact the owners of the website for

more information or to ask questions
The site is up to date
Information from 1991 is not listed as recent

There are no errors

The site uses proper spelling and grammar

The website is appropriate

There is no inappropriate language, graphics, or
photos

These guidelines are not 100%

When in doubt, ask for help from a teacher
or librarian
If youre still not sure, DONT use it
Be careful with .com sites

All .com sites are trying to sell something, which

means they are all biased in some way
Sites with lots of advertisements are usually less
credible

If you use ANY information from a source in

your paper, you must CITE it.
Works Cited Page
In-Text Citations

If you didnt say it yourself and you dont cite it,

it is plagiarism.
Plagiarism can result in:

A zero for the assignment

A requirement to redo the entire assignment
In college, plagiarism may fail you for an entire course
In college, plagiarism may result in expulsion, with no
tuition refund

Is much easier to spot than it used to be

Doesnt take very long for a teacher to check
A teacher can type 10 words of your paper into a
search engine, and within seconds, compare it to
tens of thousands of other papers that have
already been written

In high school, many teachers believe that

you are guilty until proven innocent of
plagiarism
Is easy to avoid
Citation makers
MLA style sheets

Citation makers will write your works cited

page for you if you have the right
information on your sources
Books, articles, and websites are all cited
differently
The more information you have, the better
When you find a source that you think you
can use, you need to make sure you have
several things

Your checklist:

Author
Title
Publication company
Publication location
Publication date
Page numbers
Date accessed online
Editor
ENTIRE web address

You might not always be able to find all of

this information, but get as much as you can.

Go to Son of Citation Machine

http://citationmachine.net/
Click on MLA at the top left of the page.
Click on the type of source you want to cite.
Fill in the boxes for your source.
Click Submit.

Voila! Your citation is written.

If you dont ask, youll never know.