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Plagiarism question for Computing course

Hello guys, please please help me.

I am studying on an Access to Computing course - our first assignment is on Networking - describing the concepts of networking compared to a stand alone computer, and benefits of it etc.

It says it has to be produced as a report. Now here is my issue. Because i havent been in education for a long time, I am totally new to the whole Harvard Ref system which is what my college adopts.

Basically to do this assignment i MUST gather many books, look at websites etc to gain the information about networking basics etc. As i cannot just write paragraphs in my own words without reading up on the topic. But when i get the information, even if i translate it into my own words (paraphrasing) i still need to reference this clearly right?

So this means every single paragraph in my report more or less will be covered in speech marks and references to it as i will be getting all the information from books etc for each part of my report??

Then surely I cant get a good mark such as a distinction?


Please get back to me



Jay
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nerdcake
6
Well referenced stuff does look a bit weird, and it even takes a while to get to grips with reading it what with (Lennon & McCartney, 1966) popping up in the middle of sentences. The most common style just requires the surnames of the author(s) and date of publication in text, with a full description (including title and page number) in a list at the end, although you can put the page number in text as well.

For the Harvard style you shouldn't have speech marks in text for a reference, could you give me an example of how you were told to reference? Or did you mean you would be quoting a lot? That is not normally the best idea. It's better to say:
All brontosauruses are very thin at either end, but thicker in the middle (Elk, 1972).


Than
According to Elk in her 1972 theory of brontosauruses: "All brontosauruses are very thin at one end, much, much fatter in the middle, then very thin again at the other end"


Not only does the first way show that you can adhere to the reference style, it is more concise and also doesn't come across as lazy. If your report is just full of direct quotations of what other people have said, it looks like you couldn't be bothered to edit your work and come up with your own ideas.

Take a peek at any published research and you will see it is covered in brackets with all the references. It's ok if your report looks like that.
(edited 9 years ago)
You don't need to have every line filled with quotations, just reference when you discuss an idea which is not originally your own. The reason you are using other people's ideas is so that the report doesn't rely on just small amount of sources; they are testing your research skills.

To get the distinction, make sure you critically analyze the concepts you discuss.

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