Avoiding Plagiarism
March 06, 2008 | Tutor
Tips
When you set out
to write a paper, I doubt many of you think, “I am going to see if
I can get away with copying directly from sources and stealing
other people’s ideas!” In fact, most plagiarism is done without
intent.
So what can you do to make sure you can avoid the possibility of plagiarizing?
• First, if you haven’t completed your Works Cited page, and don’t know how to correctly document a parenthetical citation, at least put the name of the book or article in parentheses and the page number after places in your paper where you have taken other people’s ideas. You can always go back and format the citation correctly, but at least you will remember where you got your information from!
• It sometimes helps to highlight certain phrases in an article that you want to directly quote in your paper. That way, when you think of incorporating it in your paper, you can find it easily and the source from which it came.
• Do not think that because you find synonyms for words in a sentence that the sentence becomes your own. For example, saying that “the blissful winter snow falls gracefully to the ground” is the same as “the heavenly winter snow descends elegantly to the ground.”
• No matter how desperate you are, never take the work of someone else and try to pass it off as your own! That includes works written by you previously for another class or purpose.
posted by: Steffani
So what can you do to make sure you can avoid the possibility of plagiarizing?
• First, if you haven’t completed your Works Cited page, and don’t know how to correctly document a parenthetical citation, at least put the name of the book or article in parentheses and the page number after places in your paper where you have taken other people’s ideas. You can always go back and format the citation correctly, but at least you will remember where you got your information from!
• It sometimes helps to highlight certain phrases in an article that you want to directly quote in your paper. That way, when you think of incorporating it in your paper, you can find it easily and the source from which it came.
• Do not think that because you find synonyms for words in a sentence that the sentence becomes your own. For example, saying that “the blissful winter snow falls gracefully to the ground” is the same as “the heavenly winter snow descends elegantly to the ground.”
• No matter how desperate you are, never take the work of someone else and try to pass it off as your own! That includes works written by you previously for another class or purpose.
posted by: Steffani
