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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is theft of another person's writings or ideas. Generally, it occurs when someone steals expressions from another author's composition and makes them appear to be his own work.

Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own. Copyright laws protect writers' words as their legal property. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote.

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use:

a) another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
b) any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
c) quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or
d) paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

Strategies for Avoiding Plagiarism

a) Put in quotations everything that comes directly from the text especially when taking notes.
b) Paraphrase, but be sure you are not just rearranging or replacing a few words.

Instead, read over what you want to paraphrase carefully; cover up the text with your hand, or close the text so you can’t see any of it (and so aren’t tempted to use the text as a “guide��). Write out the idea in your own words without peeking.

c) Check your paraphrase against the original text to be sure you have not accidentally used the same phrases or words, and that the information is accurate.

 

Sources Taken From:
Produced by Writing Tutorial Services, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

Produced by "plagiarism: Answers and much more"
http://www.answers.com/topic/plagiarism

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