What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism: "The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft. (Oxford English Dictionary online, 2006)
- Give credit when you use other people's content in your academic work.
- Your assignments and exams must be your own original work, not someone else's.
Avoid Plagiarism
1. Take careful, organized notes
- Clearly mark passages you copy word-for-word, those you paraphrase and those that are you own thoughts.
2. Know how and when to cite. Though citation rules vary for different style guides, the basic principles remain the same:
- Use quote marks when using someone's exact phrasing, even if it's only a word or two, and cite it.
- Paraphrase by putting a passage into your own words, making sure you change the sentence structure and other distinctions of the original, without misrepresenting its meaning
- Compare your paraphrase to the source and check that you haven't accidentally kept significant words or phrases.
- If an author has captured a concept perfectly, quote it, or paraphrase most of it but put quote marks around the few words that could not be said any other way.
- Always cite paraphrases! You may not be using someone else's words, but you are using their ideas.
3. Printable handout
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