Chapter 7. Avoiding Plagiarism.

Using somebody else’s work as your own is plagiarism. In some cases you will unintentionally plagiarize by not properly acknowledging where the ideas or work originated from. This is the most common way to plagiarize because a lot of people do not think about it. In other cases people have been caught trying to pass on somebody else’s work as their own. This is the most serious form of plagiarism and will not be tolerated. Some students will purchase online a document that someone else has written, or patched together paragraphs from a few sources and failed to acknowledge the source. When you do something like this you intentionally are not trying to write your own information thus should receive the proper penalty. When you don’t take notes when doing your research you tend to forget where you learned some information. This makes it hard to give credit to the original source where the information came from. Plagiarism has also been found in group projects. If you get feed back from a group member you don’t necessarily have to give them credit for fixing a spelling error or rephrasing a single sentence. However, if the feedback they give you changes your writing significantly they you might want to give them some credit on the help. There are several ways to avoid plagiarism. Checking your works cited page; identify each quotation, paraphrase, and summary, check for appropriate in-text citation, include every source you used on the works cited, and check for changes in the writing style will help you avoid plagiarism. Make sure you writing your own ideas instead of copying some ones work. If you cant find a better way to word something the make sure you appropriately credit the person who wrote it in the first place.