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.
Steps to 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. Refer to the avoiding plagiarism guide
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