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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is stealing someone else's words or ideas, and it is absolutely illegal in the academic world. Plagiarizing completely undermines the purpose of education: learning to think for yourself. Teachers expect nothing less than your own original and creative work; plagiarism is exactly the opposite of those expectations.

Let's look at the University's policy on plagiarism, which can be found in the Undergraduate Catalog:

Plagiarism- the use of another's words without attribution and without enclosing the words in quotation marks. Plagiarism may also be defined as the act of taking the ideas or expression of ideas of another person and representing them as one's own- even if the original paper has been paraphrased or otherwise modified. A close or extended paraphrase may also be considered plagiarism even if the source is named. (16)

Many people plagiarize because they don't know how to acknowledge a source. There are three ways to acknowledge a source and safeguard against plagiarism in your work: quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing. By using one of these methods, you (as a writer) are paying for borrowed words and ideas to supplement your own.

Quoting - using a source's exact words, in quotation marks, to support one of your own ideas.

This creates a very dramatic effect in your paper and should only be done when the author's ideas are so uniquely and accurately presented that you don't want to alter the expression. When quoting, you are using entire passages of the author's writing, carefully leaving every word and punctuation mark exactly the same.

Example: According to the Clarion University Catalog, “Plagiarism may also be defined as the act of taking the ideas or expression of ideas if another person and representing them as one's own—even if the original paper has been paraphrased or otherwise modified.” (16)

Paraphrasing- putting the author's ideas into your own words and sentence structures.

Paraphrasing does not involve using any of the author's direct statements; you must use your own words to convey the author's meaning and how it supports your own ideas. Rearranging words and substituting synonyms does not constitute paraphrasing.

Example of Plagiarized text: Plagiarism is the activity of stealing the ideas of someone else and passing them off as your own, even if the sources was paraphrased or changed. (16)

Correct Paraphrase: Using someone else's ideas as if they were your own is considered plagiarism by Clarion University , regardless of whether or not the source was previously altered. (16)

Summarizing- significantly shortening a passage from a source entirely in your own words.

Like a paraphrase, both words and sentence structure must be presented in your own words. Summarizing allows you to focus only on information which relates directly to your argument; you do not have to restate the entire passage.

Example: Using someone else's ideas as if they were your own is considered plagiarism by Clarion University . (16)

Now that you know how to incorporate sources into your writing without plagiarizing, here are some tips to eliminate the risk even more:

•  Make sure that you understand the author's material. In order to put something into your own words, you need to understand it completely.

•  When taking notes from a source, decide immediately whether you are going to quote, paraphrase or summarize so that you record the information in the appropriate form right then. Also, be sure to record the page number and bibliographic information with the material you're going to cite.

•  Finally, don't have the source directly in front of you while you're writing. Turn the source over and ask yourself, “What's the writer's point?” The more you look at the writer's words, the more difficult it is to put those ideas into your own words.

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