Source text:

These allergic reactions can range from a skin rash to edema (tissue swelling), to anaphylactic reactions, including bronchospasm (constriction of the airways) and shock. These reactions are not limited to the use of the penicillin group of antibiotics, either. They may occur also as a result of the use of the cephalosporins and tetracyclines. (From McKenna, J. 1998, p. 29)

Writer’s text:

Some of these allergic reactions include skin rash, edema (swelling of tissue), bronchospasm (constriction of the airways), and shock. These side effects are not only present for the penicillin-like antibiotics. These side effects also present for antibiotics like cephalosporin and tetracycline.

Writer’s comment:

That’s general information so I do not need to cite. If it actually involves numbers then it is specific information and needs to be acknowledged.

Student’s comment:

1. This is my paranoia about being caught for plagiarism. If something was this common, I would definitely just put without doubting, and if it’s like I said it’s in the bibliography it takes very little efforts to turn it into footnotes… This isn’t most of the words, this is most of the word order, this is not just words here and there, it’s the words in the same order with almost the exactly same sentence structure…If I can say better than the source text, I would use my own words; if the source text said it better, I would say in the source text’s words. Well, they seemed like the source text said it better and the writer recognized it, but he didn’t actually change into his own words. I mean, I don’t think he can talk about “allergic reactions” to “penicillin” without saying things like “skin rash” and “bronchospasm” that sort of stuff. But they don’t have to be in the same order, and it doesn’t have to be the exact meaning to make sense. (A Master’s student in Library & Information Studies)
2. I would tell him this is was a cite. I think when we become an ordinary tradition run discipline, we start to have different assumptions what general information is, and forget there’s a variety of audience that come to the text. (A PhD student in Education)

Faculty member’s comment:

1. It’s not general information for everybody, it’s general information maybe for the people in the field. I mean these things are pretty specific, that’s knowledge that’s science, there has been experiments done for these two things. I mean this first thing, I can see that you know, they would use those words, but for the second part, you would need quotation of the study that chose that…You need to conduct to experiment to know that. So I would say this (second part) belongs to somebody who did the study. Also, people who study on that. (A professor in Education)
2. APA has some good language on that how you handle direct quotations versus paraphrases, and both cases it requires a citation, in one case with a page reference, in the other without. Paraphrases you don’t bother putting a page reference in, ’cause you’ll never find that exact quotation and you don’t use quotation marks. The student in the case would have been smarter to simply taken the exact quotation shown here in the source, put quotation marks around them, and drop in the text, and attribute it… but I would give the student credit for making that judgment. In fact it is to student’s credit. They’re beginning to make the discrimination what’s widely accepted knowledge and what might be controversial or contestable knowledge. ‘New study suggests this view is incorrect.’ Cite that new study   (A professor in Education