Skip to Main Content

Academic Honesty and Avoiding Plagiarism

Why cite your sources during a speech?

An oral citation conveys the reliability, validity and currency of your information. Citing your sources orally lets your audience know that you have researched your topic.

Failure to provide an oral citation is considered a form of plagiarism, even if you cite your sources in a written outline, bibliography, works cited page or list of references.

When you are delivering a speech, you must provide an oral citation for any words, information or ideas that are not your own.

Understanding quoting and paraphrasing in your speech

QUOTING

When you are quoting a source word for word, you must both identify the source and make it obvious to your audience that you are quoting from the source. This can certainly be done using introductory words or phrases prior ot the quote, but you can also modify the tone of your voice and brief pauses to highlight the quote in your speech. 

Example:

In an article in the November, 2004 issue of the South African Journal of Psychology, Dr. Derek Hook, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, stated that “Racism comprises a set of representations of the other in terms of negatively evaluative contents.”

PARAPHRASING

You are paraphrasing a source when you refer to someone else’s idea, but state that idea in your own words. Before you talk about the idea, you must still share the source with your audience.

Example:

According to the “Tourette Syndrome Fact Sheet,” last updated in January 2012 by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, symptoms of Tourette syndrome include uncontrolled blinking, grimacing and shoulder shrugging.

What should an oral citation include?

AUTHOR

Mention the author’s name, along with credentials to establish that author as a credible source. In some instances, a credible source can convey credibility to the author.

TITLE

State the title of a book, magazine, journal or web site. You should identify the type of publication and provide a comment regarding credibility, especially if the publication is not widely recognized. Titles of articles do not necessarily have to be mentioned, unless you are using several articles from the same source or if the title conveys content you wish to share.

DATE

Always state the date of publication. For a newspaper, magazine or journal, this will be the edition date. For a book, look for the copyright. Look for a creation or last modified date on websites. Mention the date of airing if the source was on radio or television. If you are using information from an interview, give the date when the person was interviewed.

If you are using information from a website that doesn’t clearly show a date on the document, say the date that the web page was last updated and/or the date you accessed the website.

Here are two examples with these citation pieces highlighted:

In the May 24th, 2017 edition of the New York TimesPulitzer Prize winning author and foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote… 

In the September 2016 issue of Practice Nurse, a leading peer-reviewed journal for primary care nurses, author Mandy Galloway describes shingles as…

Citation

This page was adopted from the following sources

"Library Guides: Oral Citation Guide: Home". libguides.csn.edu. College of Southern Nevada Libraries, 2017. Web. 5 June 2017.

Lucas, Stephen. The Art Of Public Speaking. 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.