What Is it? How Can I Avoid It?

Using another person’s words, ideas, thoughts, or works and taking credit for them as your own.

It IS an ethical issue! It IS a form of cheating! Can be…

Copying and pasting from internet Using a paper from another class Not citing another person’s works in a paper Paraphrasing, quoting, or summarizing and not

giving credit to the original creator (in-text citations).

Taking another person’s words or thoughts and putting them into your own words for a paper that you’re writing.

MUST ALWAYS be cited! MUST actually change more then just a few

words! You MUST have the majority of your paper be

your thoughts and ideas…and only be supplemented with citations.

Original text: Through the assessment of the rules of

plagiarism, it was determined that many students do not grasp the overall severity of copying and pasting from the internet.

Incorrect Example: Through assessing the rules of plagiarism, it was

deemed obvious that most students do not get the seriousness of pasting and copying from the internet. Why is this incorrect?

Correct Example: As copying and pasting from the internet continues to rise, it is clear that students do not grasp the seriousness of the rules of plagiarism (Carney 12).

Why is this correct?

When you take a statement from someone word-for-word.

MUST always be cited! Can be in writing or if using exact wording

from a song, interview, movie, etc. Do NOT use too many quotes in your paper,

they are only used to supplement your thoughts and ideas.

You may use all of a quote or part of a quote.

Using entire quote:

As Jacobs explains, “even though as teachers we insisted that students see writing as a process, we tended not to say the same thing about research (2).”

Using part of a quote

Through the process of teaching Information Literacy it became apparent that faculty “insisted that students see writing as a process” however, they failed to remember that proper research should be conducted in the same manner (Jacobs 2) .

The MLA Handbook

OWL (online Writing Lab at Purdue) http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/74

7/01/ Northwestern University

http://www.writing.northwestern.edu/avoiding_plagiarism.html