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Avoiding Plagiarism

Don’t be a word pirate!

Why is plagiarism wrong? Just like downloading music illegally robs musicians of payment for their work, plagiarism is copying someone’s written work without giving them credit. It is a form of stealing because plagiarists take away the originality of someone’s work and use something that they did not create.

Test Yourself : Which of these statements are examples of plagiarism?

 

Check (X ) only the examples of plagiarism.

  • You used synonyms, reworded, and interchanged some sentences from a paragraph in a book.
  • You presented facts without saying where you found them.
  • You copy a quotation that is very long and mention the author who wrote it.
  • You incorporated someone’s unique phrase or expression without acknowledgement.
  • You copy factual information such as the population of Canada without acknowledgement of where you found it.
  • You had someone translate your  paper into English / French and handed in with only your name.
  • You copy and paste pictures, maps, and graphs from the Internet.
  • While browsing the Web, you copied and pasted text into your report without quotation marks or citing the source.
  • Your paper states that Pablo Picasso is a modernist painter.
  • You present the results of your own thinking and experiments.
  • Your whole paper refers to work and ideas written by other authors.
If you don't know the answers to these questions, visit the library and pick up the pamphlet "Avoiding Plagiarism" for an explanation.
 
Tips  on how to avoid plagiarism:  
 To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit , or cite the source, whenever you use:
  • another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
  • any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
  • quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or
  • paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

 

There are many ways to avoid plagiarism and here are a few that are helpful when you are doing research:

 

ü              Figure out exactly what you are researching (your Research Question) so you can filter out the relevant and irrelevant information.

ü              Make notes of just the main points in brief sentences or point form.

ü              Structure your research around What Who When Where Why and How.

ü              Use several sources of information .

ü              Approach your topic from a particular perspective. (ie. Activist, worker, entrepreneur , feminist)

ü              Identify advantages, disadvantages and / or implications of each option.

ü              Cite your sources in a list of works cited  so you give credit to the original authors of the works you consulted and so you can share your research with others as well.
 
References:
Gibaldi, J. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.  7th Ed. NY: MLA, 2009.

Indiana University, Writing Tutorial Services.