How to Write Better Essays

you use this information? Of course not. So where should you draw

the line?

With specific information or data, in the form of facts, statistics,

tables and diagrams, it’s easier to decide. You will have found them in

a specific publication, which you will need to cite, so your reader will

know who gathered the information and where to find it. The same

applies to any information, or set of ideas, that have been organised

in a distinctive way. The information may have been known to you, but

you have never seen it presented in this form or argued in this way.

And in this lies the crucial principle:

Plagiarism 235

Whenever the author has given something distinctive to the

information or its organisation, cite the source.

In citing the source you are acknowledging the author ’s distinctive

contribution. By the same token, this applies to a phrase or passage

that you use verbatim. It has its own distinctive form that you must

acknowledge. This is true even of a single word, if this is distinctive to

the author ’s argument.

Common knowledge

But with most ideas and thoughts the situation isn’t so clear cut.

There may be nothing distinctive about them or their organisa-

tion. So you may believe quite reasonably that, although you got

the ideas from a source you’ve read, you can use them without

acknowledgement.

One justification for this is that all knowledge in the public domain,

all ‘common knowledge’, need not be referenced. But this seems to do

little more than give the problem a different name. So, what is ‘common

knowledge’? This brings us back to our original distinction. Common

knowledge is all those facts, ideas and opinions that are not dis-

tinctive of a particular author or a matter of interpretation. They

may be familiar ideas or just easily found in a number of common

reference works, like dictionaries, basic textbooks, encyclopaedias, or

yearbooks.

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