Plagiarism is defined as “literary theft,” i.e., the presentation and passing off as one’s own ideas,
words or writings of another. A common violation is the use of another student’s work without
acknowledgment. The most common violation involves a student using published materials and
failing to acknowledge the sources.
Copying a direct quotation without using quotation marks or crediting the source is considered
plagiarism. Another form of plagiarism consists of paraphrasing an idea or use of an original idea
without properly introducing or documenting the paraphrase or borrowed idea.
The ideas and words of an author are his/her property - they are protected by law and must be
credited to him/her when they are borrowed. In order to avoid plagiarism, one should:
- Use quotation marks for all quoted materials.
- Paraphrase material in his/her own style and language rather than just rearrange
sentences.
- Use footnotes or other accepted methods to credit the author.
- Provide a bibliography for the sources noted in the footnotes.
- Introduce the quotation or paraphrase with the name of the author of the material that
was borrowed. |
