Plagiarism
How Do I Know I've Committed It?
Q: What is plagiarism?
A: Plagiarism is taking credit for someone else's ideas, either intentionally or unintentionally.
No matter whether you meant to take credit for someone else's ideas, YOU are the one responsible for taking well-deserved credit for your own ideas or giving that well-deserved credit to someone else.
The Cardinal Rule
If the idea did not originate in your mind, or if the idea is not common knowledge to most people, YOU MUST CITE THE SOURCE.
Signs of Plagiarism
#1: No Works Cited Page
If you incorporate information from other sources into your writing, you MUST give credit to the authors for their hard work. You like to get credit for your work, right? The works cited page gives credit to authors for their work. Also, the works cited page shows all the details about the source you have used. That way, anyone can check out the source for himself or herself.
The Fix
Create a works cited page of all the sources you used in your writing. Click the button below to help you create a works cited page.
#2: No Parenthetical Documentation
If you don't tell a reader which ideas are yours and which are from someone else, the reader is left guessing whose idea is whose. Who is supposed to get credit for the idea? The purpose of parenthetical documentation is to signal to the reader, in the very sentence where it happens, that you have borrowed an idea from a source.
The Fix
For each sentence in which you borrow information from a source, at the end of the sentence, tell the reader from where the information came by using parentheses and the author's name or the title of the source. (This should be the first piece of information from the source in the works cited page.) Click the button below to help you.
#3: Copying and Pasting
Copying and pasting text is highly dangerous. The road to plagiarism is paved with copied and pasted text. Besides, everyone knows when text is copied and pasted because it looks different when printed!
The Fix
Take what you were thinking about copying and pasting, but instead:
- Quote it. This means you use the exact words of the source and place quotation marks around the text. At the end of the sentence, however, you MUST use parenthetical documentation.
- Paraphrase it. "Translate" all of the information, even the details, into your own way of speaking. But just because you put the ideas into your own words, this doesn't mean you thought of those ideas! At the end of the sentence, you MUST use parenthetical documentation.
- Summarize it. Choose only the important facts and ideas. These still aren't your ideas, though. At the end of the sentence, you MUST use parenthetical documentation.
Click the button below to help you further.