- The Basic Tenant of a Writing Cleanroom
"No unoriginal text should be pasted or otherwise enter into a work in progress without immediate citation being applied."
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The act of copying and pasting (or simply retyping) text into your work should be treated with extreme reverence. If the text is not yours, it needs to be cited immediately after pasting.
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Even if you intend to go back and rewrite a copied section or remove it altogether, time or memory might prevent that from happening.
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This approach is “write and cite”, others take a “write first, cite later” approach. The problem with the latter is that it’s easy to forget what needs to be done.
- How to use a Writing Cleanroom
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Never mix unoriginal and original text in the same document.
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When pasting text into your work, decide first if it’s text that needs to be copied. Would this information be better or equally-well presented as a paraphrase? If so, put it away and paraphrase the information instead. After you’re done, be sure to cite the source of the information immediately.
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If you decide copying the text is appropriate, do so but immediately put it in either quotes or block-quotes as appropriate and add other needed citations.
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Be careful to not remove any citation marks through reformatting or editing of the document. This can be especially problematic if you use block-quotes but convert the document to a format that doesn’t support it.
- Paraphrasing
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Paraphrasing is not about changing the words someone else wrote, but rather, writing the information in your own words.
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The easiest way to achieve this is to read the information you want to paraphrase and then put it away. Don’t copy it and don’t look at it. From there, just write the information in your words.