An undergraduate in arts # 3
Source Text
With its fluctuating population of 10 000 to 25 000 people, Vancouver’s Skid Road forms Canada’s biggest, roughest and poorest inner-city district, a surreal neighborhood some 20 blocks square where doctors grapple with the most intractable medial and social problem the country can throw at them.
Source:
Jones, D. (1998). Vancouver’s Vision of Hell Requires Special Type of MD. Vancouver: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 159 (2), pp. 169-173.
Writer’s Text:
This specific area of Vancouver has the largest population of street people in Canada, and one of the largest in North America (Jones 169).
Writer’s Comment:
I got that from this article, (I cited) Deborah Jones, and page number. This is not common knowledge… I cited it to show where it is from… it is somebody else’s research, right?
I do not quite agree with the student. There are two problems here. First of all, I think what the student means is not exactly the same as Jones’s idea. In “Canada’s biggest, roughest and poorest inner-city district”, “biggest” not only refers to population but also some other elements such as the area of the district. But the writer’s text “the largest population of street people in Canada” only talks about the population of street people, which actually is not articulated in Jones’s text. So the student seems to misunderstand the author and change the concept. Besides, I do not know whether Jones got this from his own research or it is the common knowledge. The source text does not show that. I think if it is the result of the writer’s research, you need to cite it. Otherwise, you do not need to cite it. (A graduate in Education)