Plagiarism vs Paraphrasing

P L A G I A R I S M

...is when you use another person's words or ideas without crediting the original writer.

Consequences:

    • Failure of the assignment or course
    • Requirement to do the work over
    • Suspension/expulsion
    • Lawsuit, fines, and/or firing for workplace plagiarism
    • WRDSB’s policy

Solutions can include these options:

    • Paraphrase with appropriate citations
    • Give credit through footnotes/endnotes, a works cited page, or a bibliography
IdentifyingPlagiarism

P A R A P H R A S I N G

...is when you restate another person's ideas in your own words or format.

Steps in Paraphrasing


  1. Read through the whole passage and make sure you understand its meaning.
  2. Put the passage to one side and summarize, in your own words, the key points of the text. Leave any shared language; i.e., technical terms or conventional names, the same.
  3. Go back to the original passage and make sure you have captured all the main points in an entirely new form without plagiarizing or repeating the text verbatim (word for word).
  4. If any section or term in the paraphrased text is exactly the same as that included in the original passage, either reword it or use quotation marks to identify the information that has been exactly borrowed from the source.
  5. If some of the words in your paraphrased text are the same as the original, use a thesaurus to find an alternative.
  6. Record the source in brackets after the paraphrased content (you still need to give credit where it is due!).
ParaphrasingPractice