Lesson 6: Avoiding Plagiarism

Unit III Lesson 6: Avoiding Plagiarism

Avoiding Plagiarism

If you want to avoid plagiarism, the first thing you must know is exactly what plagiarism is and how it happens.

Plagiarism is using someone else’s material as if it were your own. Plagiarism can be calculated and intentional or totally accidental, but either way, it is wrong and could cause some severe repercussions for any student. In fact, most plagiarism is accidental and occurs when a student unconsciously uses an idea, if not a quotation, from a source that the student has consulted as a part of the preparation for an assignment. This error is actually easy if, when you are carrying out research, you are not careful to make notes concerning the source of your materials. On the other hand, flagrant plagiarism occurs by design when a student borrows, purchases, or paraphrases another work, even one of his or her own papers that was used for another class. This act is far more serious and often results in a grade of zero, even expulsion from the institution that the student is attending. Therefore, if these things all are plagiarism, how do you avoid it?

Avoiding plagiarism is best achieved by diligence and attention to detail. What that means is that as you carry out your research, take good notes. If you print something, be certain to write the author’s name or the source on the printed material. Fortunately, when you print something from the Internet, it usually has a URL at the bottom so that, should you want to return later, the task will be easy. However, if you are working in a media center, such as a library, and print something on a photo-printer, you may not have much besides the printed matter. Take the time to record your source. Many times, you will have a printed page or two and find something on those pages valuable to the topic. To track the material down again might well be impossible, but to go ahead and use it in your paper anyway certainly puts you at risk for plagiarism.

One very good technique comes only with experience. At the end of a major paper, many students will realize while putting together the reference page, “this would be a lot easier if all of my sources had authors.” Obviously this realization can only come at the end of such a project or paper, but what about the next time? The point is that when you start your research, you are at liberty to use any sources, and you should take the time to use reliable sources that have an author. If you realized the savings in time and risk, the little bit of extra time spent during the research phase would be very much worth the sacrifice. First, you have the author to attribute any use of the material to, and there is no confusion or waste of time wondering what to put in a parenthetical reference. Finally, the structure of your references on the reference page is solved too.

There are no secrets to avoiding plagiarism. If you are consistent, diligent, and scrupulous with detail, you will not have any problems. As has been said before, “It is what you do not know that will hurt you.” 2

If you have questions about using sources or would like additional information about avoiding plagiarism, contact the CSU Success Center at 1.877.875.0533 or [email protected].

Check for Understanding (on Avoiding Plagiarism) (See Answer Key at bottom of document.)

Indicate if the following examples are plagiarism or not.

1. You have photocopies of several pages of text, including the perfect sentence for your paper’s conclusion, but you lost the exact source. You include it anyway.

2. You have a quotation and you know the author, but you do not have the place and date of publication. You preface the quotation with a statement declaring the author’s name, and you include the name of the author among your references, but that is all.

3. You remember an odd but interesting comment about your topic and want to include it in your paper, but you cannot recall where it came from. You decide to refer to it vaguely and indirectly but include it in your paper anyway.

4. You have a lengthy quotation, put quotation marks around it, and then forget to add a parenthetical reference after the quotation. However, you include a reference on the references page.

5. You start a paragraph explaining that a particular author, by name, had important information on your topic. In the next two paragraphs you talk about his ideas, but the reader cannot confidently separate your ideas from those of the author. You have the reference listed on your reference page.

6. You are putting together a nice PowerPoint and have the perfect quotation to end it. On the last slide, there are no quotation marks, no references to an author or source, and no reference page at the end.

7. You are giving a speech, and at one point in your presentation you allude to the lines, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” but you do not mention any source or author.

8. Your paper includes several tables and photographs you found that really help support your topic, but you do not indicate their source either under the material or on the reference page.

Answer Key

Avoiding Plagiarism

1. Plagiarism 3

2. Not plagiarism—Because you declared the author of the quotation, and although the reference is not correct, this is certainly not plagiarism. The intent is obviously to do the right thing. 3. Plagiarism 4. Not plagiarism—The quotation marks demonstrate you are saying it came directly from a particular source, and the reference being included on the reference page shows that you were not trying to misrepresent anything. This is a serious error, leaving off the parenthetical reference, but everything else says you were not trying to pass off any material as your own. 5. Not plagiarism—Even though this is poor scholarship and writing, very poor in fact, you are not trying to hide anything. 6. Plagiarism—A PowerPoint is exactly like a paper and requires documentation and proper acknowledgement of sources. 7. Not plagiarism—Some things are so well known that in no way could it be inferred that you are trying to pass off those words as your own. In fact, in some cases, such words might be used because everyone is expected to recognize them. This is a case of allusion for effect but not plagiarism. 8. Plagiarism—All tables, photographs and other media that you might encounter in your research are protected, and you must give proper credit for any item that you make a part of your own work. Some companies, for instance Disney, are very aggressive in protecting copyrighted material and have brought cases against very small breaches as they protect their brands.