Turnitin.com is a program that we use in FUSD to check for plagiarism. Many, if not most, colleges use Turnitin as well. Some teachers at Irvington also use Turnitin.com to grade papers online, and to do peer editing with their classes.
Plagiarism comes from the Latin word for "kidnapping" or "literary thief!" It includes any instance where you take another person's words or ideas and use them without giving credit. It doesn't matter if you use that person's exact words or not; using their ideas or facts without citing is plagiarism! Plagiarism is taken very seriously at Irvington and at high schools all over the world. See Irvington's Academic Integrity Policy, linked below, for specific consequences. Beyond high school it is even more serious: you can be kicked out of college, fired, or sued in court for stealing another person's ideas or work. That includes artistic work belonging to others, such as images, videos, or songs that others have created.
Turnitin.com checks your paper to see if any parts are copied from the Internet or from any other student's paper that has ever been submitted to the system anywhere in the world.
If you ever have technical difficulties with Turnitin.com: 1. Tell your teacher, 2. Come see Ms. McAuley, the Turnitin.com administrator, in the library.
It is always better to do your own work. WHEN IN DOUBT, CITE YOUR SOURCES.
Please note that some of our policies have changed, so please read this even if you've used Turnitin before!
Irvington High School Academic Integrity Policy updated 2023 (this is found in the Student Handbook)
Purdue OWL tutorials on paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism
What Is Plagiarism? (from the Turnitin.com folks)
Basic introduction to paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism (McAuley)
Paraphrasing and Avoiding Plagiarism lesson notes sheet
Attributive Tags (handout)
Attributive Tags (slides)
Paraphrasing vs. quoting, University of Adelaide, Australia (PDF)
Avoiding Plagiarism for Juniors and Seniors
Parts of a Paragraph (so it's not all quotes!)