If you quote correctly, you avoid plagiarism!
Quoting involves using exact words, phrases and sentences from a source, setting them off with quotation marks, and where the information was taken from. Let's look at some examples together:
Below is a passage taken from Phillip W. Magness' article, "Alexander Hamilton as Immigrant: Musical Mythology Meets Federalist Reality" taken from The Independent Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 2017), pg. 498
The historical Alexander Hamilton made a number of outwardly baffling yet
thoroughly attested turns against the same liberal immigration beliefs that Miranda
seeks to illustrate with his character. From the early 1790s until his death in 1804,
Hamilton's politics were marred by his alarmingly habitual deployment of nativist
character attacks upon his own foreign-born political opponents. By the end of his
life, his political beliefs actually placed him among the leading advocates of
immigration restrictions in the Founding generation.
Take a look at the passages below and decide:
is this plagiarism?
By the end of his life, the real Alexander Hamilton's political views were, "marred by his alarmingly habitual deployment of nativist
character attacks upon his own foreign-born political opponents."
Yes, this is plagiarism:
Notice the writer of this passage liberally borrows words, phrases and parts of sentences from the passage (even quoting parts) but gives no indication of where the information came from.
Is this plagiarism?
By the end of his life, the real Alexander Hamilton's political views were, "marred by his alarmingly habitual deployment of nativist
character attacks upon his own foreign-born political opponents." (Magness 498)
No, this is not plagiarism.
In this example, the writer cites the source using the Modern Language Association (MLA) style, with the author's name and page number cited at the end of the quote.
Is this plagiarism?
By the end of his life, the real Alexander Hamilton's political views were, "marred by his alarmingly habitual deployment of nativist
character attacks upon his own foreign-born political opponents." 1
No, this is not plagiarism.
Here, the writer uses Chicago style to reference the author, by marking the cited source with a footnote/endnote number. A footnote or endnote will appear later in the paper (either at the bottom of the page or the end of the paper) containing the complete citation for the author, including the page number.
Notice that in each of these examples, the writer quotes Magness' words exactly as it was given within the sentence. Whenever you quote someone else's words, you have to write them exactly as they originally appear.