Is not posting quotation marks in a one sentence stastistic considered Plagiarism?

Question

I was doing a report on Water Qualities in the Triangle of North Carolina, and posted my source of the information at the end of the paragraph in parenthesess, but didn't directly quotate the source during the sentence. I copied the future water usage of humans per day in the Triangle, which was one sentence long.. I was given a failure for Plagiarism..

I did in fact, CITE the website that I retrieved the information from at the END of the paragraph. This information came from a non-point source.. which was taken from many websites, which some were NOT copyrighted.

Answer 1

Well, you should have used quotation marks because the sentence WAS the actual words from the source. Now, I don't think you should have been failed BECAUSE you did insert, in parentheses, the actual source. The problem is HOW strict the person grading the paper is. Had you paraphrased the sentence and included the source, there would be no way for claiming plagiarism. I suggest you try and speak to the person grading the paper. Also, if that doesn't work, you should speak to someone ABOVE the person that graded your paper. IMPORTANT: Check out the institution guidelines about plagiarism; if there are none or they aren't specific and clear, you can make them reevaluate your paper.

Answer 2

Take the paper to the Dean of the department. You did right with the parenthesis, but statistic are numbers come up by others work; anyone with have brain would know you did not do a long enough study to get the numbers so it had to come from somewhere else. If that was the only error then I believe you got shafted. If anything points should have been taken off for punctuality or missing source (footnote).
Unless your paper was meant to create new information versus inform someone of the information that is out there you did not make a failing error.
Check your school's bulletin, covenants, etc... concerning plagiarism for exact definitions. This may be fight or a walk in the park depending on previous school procedure, the professor's standards and methods (are the consistent), etc...

Answer 3

technically, if you use information in the exact wording as you found it without using "quotation marks" or properly cite it, it is considered plagiarism. Even if you change a word here and there, you must cite it.
sorry, i hate to say it, but if you didn't cite where you found the information stating future water usage of humans per day, then you are pretty much plagiarizing. I do, however, think it is kind of dumb that you were given an F for that. I think that if you express to your instructor that you knew you were using someone else's information and thought it was ok, or that you were unsure of when to cite, that your instructor should give you some kind of break...
But to answer your question directly, Yes, not using quotation marks when stating direct information that is not yours, you are plagiarizing, regardless if it is one sentence or a hundred. You should cite every time you use information you have found.

Answer 4

Even if you use one word from another source, and it's a word that represents someone else's ideas or research, you have to put that one word in quotations. When in doubt, you should always err on the side of over citing or over using quotation marks. Or just paraphrase what the person said (don't use any of their exact words). But even when you paraphrase something, you still need to cite the source at the end of the paraphrased section or in a footnote.
Still, a failing grade for one error seems really harsh. If that was pretty much the only problem with your paper, and if you have the sort of teacher that you can talk to at all, you should go in and see him/her and explain your mistake, promise not to do it again, etc. and see if you can get your grade bumped up.

Answer 5

Yes! It's funny, just the other day my wife and I were talking to one of her friends who is a teacher and that exact same subject came up. I was surprised to learn that if you have so much as one sentence that is quoted word for word with out "quotation marks", you can get busted for plagiarism. In your case it might be a good idea to talk to your teacher about this. Certainly you didn't intentionally plagiarize. Maybe you can make a minor change and rectify the situation because you were unaware of the rules of plagiarism. I know in the case of my wife's friend, if she suspected the student had done this unintentionally she would talk to them to make sure they understood the situation and allow them to rectify this.