16.1: Introduction

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Janice R. Walker

“The only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that everything changes.”* I’ve heard this saying all my life, but until I wanted to use it for this essay, it never occurred to me to check where it came from. According to Bartleby.com, this pithy saying is attributed to Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, and should actually read, “Change alone is unchanging.” But then Bartleby cites The Columbia World of Quotations, edited by Robert Andrews, Mary Biggs, and Michael Seidel, as the source of the information about Heraclitus.

So, now what do I do? Do I change the opening quotation? I like my version better than Heraclitus’s (maybe because it’s the way I always heard it, right or wrong). Do I cite Heraclitus? Do I cite Bartleby.com? Or do I cite The Columbia World of Quotations? Or maybe I don’t need a citation at all. But then, will I be charged with plagiarism? Of course, if I can argue it’s common knowledge, maybe I can get away with leaving it alone?

I’m so confused!

When it comes to citation practices, the saying is not only confusing to cite, but apt. Often citing sources for an academic project is a bit like trying to hit a moving target: the rules seem to keep changing. What doesn’t seem to change, of course, is the need to know where information comes from. Otherwise, how do we (both authors and readers) know if the information is reliable? If we don’t know or understand the context from which information is gleaned, how do we know what it means? And, of course, failure to cite words, ideas, or information obtained from other sources is considered plagiarism and can have serious repercussions.

So, in the face of so much turmoil and because the issue can have very high stakes, in the classroom and beyond, most of us are, admittedly, confused. While attempting to clear up this confusion may actually complicate it still further, nonetheless, in this article, I explore citation as a rhetorical practice, one which does not always fit precisely within the boundaries of traditional style guides but that nonetheless follows a logic that does make sense and that can be learned.