English Department

Writing & Research Guide

 

 

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism

You may have heard the word used in relation to lawsuits in the publishing or recording industries. You may have also had classroom discussions about academic plagiarism. Plagiarism is the act of using another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source. In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have thought or written something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else. Plagiarism in student writing is often unintentional, as when the elementary school student, assigned to do a report on a certain topic, goes home and copies down word for word, everything on the subject in an encyclopedia. Excerpted from MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

 

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to: copying word for word from a printed source; copying the work of another student; submitting the ideas and/or writing of another as the student’s own; paraphrasing the ideas of a printed or primary source.

 

Plagiarism in any form is an unacceptable action. Regardless of motivation, using the words or ideas of another without giving proper credit is a misrepresentation of a student’s work. Students and their parents have a responsibility to insure that all work submitted is original and does not contain any information or ideas from sources that are not cited.

 

When you write a research paper, you do not simply piece together the ideas of others and call it a research paper. You need to incorporate your newly discovered information into your own thinking and make your work sound like you. You want your research paper to have a voice, your voice, but you don’t want to mislead people into thinking that all these ideas are your own. If you do so, you may be guilty of plagiarism; the act of presenting someone else’s ideas as your own. You must give proper credit to the sources of your information.

 

Below are some statements that will clarify what constitutes plagiarism.

 

Word-for-word plagiarism – a researcher repeats the exact words of a source without giving the necessary credit.

 

Paraphrase plagiarism – a researcher says basically the same thing as the original source with just a few words changed

 

Spot plagiarism – a researcher uses only a source’s key words or phrases as his or her own without giving the source credit.

 

You owe it to your sources, your readers, and yourself to give credit for the ideas you use, unless the ideas are widely accepted as “common knowledge.” Information is considered common knowledge if most people already know it or it can be found in nearly any basic reference book on the subject. Here’s the difference:

 

Common knowledge – There are 365 days in a year. Knowledge that requires giving credit to your source – It rained 210 days in Seattle during 1990.

 

Excerpted from Sebranek, Patrick, Verne Meyer, and Dave Kemper Writer’s INC; A Student Handbook for Writing and Learning. D. C. Heath and Company, 1996.