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Religion & Philosophy Research Guide: Writing & Citing

a collection of library and online resources to aid in the study of topics in world religion

Contextualizing Religion

“[R]eligious studies is interdisciplinary, so there are multiple modes of investigation, including literary, historical, cultural, sociological, and anthropological. These approaches tend to contextualize religious phenomena, such as beliefs and rituals

 

- Writing Center, UNC Chapel Hill

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Plan your paper:

  • Use your own ideas.
  • Use the ideas of others sparingly- only to support or reinforce your own argument.

Take Effective Notes:

  • Use Noodletools notecards, Google docs, or Zotero 

  • Include complete citation information! 

Cite properly:

  • Use quotation marks when directly stating another person’s work.

  • When to cite?

    • When using a direct quote

    • Paraphrasing an idea from a text

    • Summarizing a text 

    • Using facts, information, and data, anything that is not common knowledge

    • When in doubt, cite! 

  • Cite while you write -- do not leave your citations until the last minute. 

Citing in MLA

Philosophy and Religion courses at Lawrenceville use MLA Citation Style.

In MLA, you will need to create two citations for each source:

  • full bibliographic citation (goes at the end of your paper on the Works Cited page)
  • An in-text citation (a shorter, parenthetical citation that sits at the end of each piece of evidence used in your writing).

Only cite the information that is available to you. If you cannot identify a piece of the template [e.g. an author or date], leave it out rather than making it up.

Citation and Bibliography Tools