Plagiarism and Academic Honesty: Avoiding Plagiarism

8 Steps to Plagiarism-Free Papers:

1.  Understand what plagiarism is

• Anything that is not cited is assumed to be your own work.
• Even if you just forgot to add a citation or quotation mark you are still representing someone else's work as your work.

2. Understand how to paraphrase

• Use your own words.
• You must change the words and the sentence structure of the original without changing the content.
• Give credit for the ideas with both an in-text citation and an entry in your bibliography/reference/works cited page.

3. Take careful notes

• Any time you write anything down, note where it came from.
• Note the URL and date accessed or the page number of the source.
• Use quotation marks around direct quotes.
• Consider using different colours or fonts for different sources to differentiate where information came from.

4. When in doubt, cite the source

• Using outside sources lends credibility and authority to your writing.

5. Copy and paste with caution

• Never copy anything without adding quotation marks and noting the URL and the date.

6. Use a citation guide

• Your teachers ask for a certain citation style. Make sure you know what is required.
• All citation styles required a citation in the text (in-text citation or footnote/endnote) and a full citation in the bibilography/referece/works cited list.

7. Make it clear who said what

• Use a signal phrase to help the reader know you are using another source.
• Always make sure it is clear when you are using source or changing sources.
• Give credit to the right person.

8. When in doubt - ALWAYS ASK!