Plagiarism

2.8 Summing Up, p. 75, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers*

You have plagiarized if

• You took notes that did not distinguish summaries, paraphrasing, and quotations from someone else's work, and then you presented the wording from the notes as if it were all your own.
• While browsing the Web, you copied text and pasted it into your paper without quotation marks or without citing the source.
• You presented facts without saying where you found them.
• You repeated or paraphrased someone's wording without acknowledgment.
• You took someone's unique or particularly apt phrase without acknowledgment.
• You paraphrased someone's argument or presented someone's line of thought without acknowledgment.
• You bought or otherwise acquired a research paper and handed in part or all of it as your own.

You can avoid plagiarism by

• Making a list of the writers and viewpoints you discovered in your research and using this list to double-check the presentation of material in your paper.
• Keeping the following three categories distinct in your notes: your ideas, your summaries of others' material and exact wording you copy.
• Identifying the sources of all material you borrow - exact wording, paraphrases, ideas, arguments, and facts.

Check with your instructor when you are uncertain about your use of sources.

*Joseph Gibaldi, The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition, Modern Language Association of America, 2003.