Whose Idea Was That? A Practical Guide to Using Sources Thoughtfully

Once, when I was a professor, a student raised his hand and said, “Someone once said that…” and then he proceeded to quote the most important authority on the subject. (Okay, it was me. He quoted me to me.)

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“I said that last week,” I said. The class tittered. 

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Inside, I felt a nauseating conflict of feelings: proud that I am so quotable and irritated that I didn’t get credit for it. Oh, and ashamed that I felt those first two things, too, but that has more to do with being raised the daughter of an immigrant who stressed humility above all else.

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Still, I’m here to help you avoid being that kid by giving you some advice on how to use sources to help you make your point while simultaneously bolstering your credibility and prompting your listeners to trust what you say. 

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A Cultural Note on “Intellectual Property”

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Right off the bat, I’d like to emphasize that this is an American opinion. In many other countries, most notably China, there are very different ideas about how to use ideas that come from not-you. 

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In the U.S., it is a matter of “intellectual property.” Ideas and language are understood as the property of one person who originated them. In any medium meant for public consumption, then, we must give “credit” to the person who is the “owner” of those ideas or words, and we do this with citation.

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In many other places, however, there’s a different understanding: ideas and the words which express them are considered property of the culture, no matter who originated them. People learn to build on those ideas, and put those new ideas out there into the collective pot, knowing others will build on those ideas someday. And, in fact, citing every little thing can come across as tedious and priggish. Any idea contains the DNA of ten other ideas. Nobody, in other words, can “own” an idea or a phrase. Everybody shares.

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But in the U.S. and most other Westernized cultures, we understand the use and/or quotation of ideas and language without giving credit to be a form of stealing, because an idea is personal or institutional property. And nobody trusts a thief, right?

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So take all of this advice in context. When you’re speaking outside the U.S., do a little recon to find out what the local opinions are about all this. But here are my best two pieces of advice for you about how to ensure you’re coming across as reliable, smart, principled, and trustworthy as a speaker in the United States.