Avoiding Plagiarism

You can take steps to avoid plagiarism in your writing by carefully managing your time, keeping
a good record of your sources, and by knowing when and how to appropriately cite your sources.

Manage Your Time

Plagiarism is often the result of procrastination. Doing research, writing your paper, and
incorporating sources correctly takes time. Cobbling your paper together the night before it is
due leaves you susceptible to unintentional plagiarism. In your rush, you may use your sources
improperly or forget to cite.

Waiting until the last minute to do your paper also increases the appeal of buying a paper online
or trying to turn in a paper you wrote previously for a different class. If you are caught doing
those things, there can be very serious consequences.

Develop a Note-Taking System

When you are in the middle of doing research, make sure that you use a note-taking system that
clearly differentiates the following things: your own personal thoughts on the sources, quotes
taken directly from the sources (with a page number), and summaries or paraphrases of the
source.

One strategy you could apply during your note taking is the use of different colors to
differentiate what text was copied directly from the source, from what you wrote using your own
words. Here’s an example:
Reference management websites and applications are excellent tools to help you keep track of
your sources. Most of these websites are free and will even create the works cited page for you!
Some of the most popular citation tools are:

 Zotero
 RefME (which works with Evernote)
 BibMe
 Mendeley
Pick one of these helpful tools at the beginning of your research and use it during your initial
searches to ensure you always keep track of your materials.

Know What Needs a Citation

The key to avoiding plagiarism is to make sure you give credit where credit is due. This may be
credit for something somebody said, wrote, emailed, drew, or implied. You need to give credit
to:

 Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie,

web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
 Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person face-to-
face, over the phone, or in writing
 Exact words or a unique phrase that you copy
 Diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials that you reprint
 Any electronically available media, including images, audio, video, or other media, that
you reuse or repost.
Ultimately, you must cite any source of information you use in your paper that doesn’t originate
with you. You do NOT need to cite:
 your own ideas and opinions
 your own words
 common knowledge
Examples of common knowledge include:

 Basic facts: there are 365 days in a year, the earth orbits the sun, the molecular structure
of water (H O), etc.
2

 Very well-known quotes: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” or “ask not
what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” You still have
to use quotation marks and indicate who said the quote (Romeo in Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet, and John F. Kennedy, respectively), but you do not need to include
the source in your bibliography.
 Subject-specific common knowledge: There is information in specific disciplines or
branches of knowledge that is considered common knowledge. A good indicator of what
constitutes common knowledge is if you see the information in 4 or 5 articles or books
and it does not need a citation. Until you become familiar with what is considered
common knowledge in your major area of study, it is best to play it safe and cite your
sources or ask your professor.
PRACTICE

What needs a citation?

 1. 86% of internet users have taken steps online to remove or mask their digital footprints.
2. The Supreme Court ruling for Brown v. the Board of Education states, “Racial
discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.”
3. Paris is the Capital of France.
4. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States of America.
5. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. 52, 950 unaccompanied homeless youth were supported through school based programs in
2008-09.
Show Answer

Know How to Incorporate Sources

Checklist for integrating sources into your research paper.

You can incorporate other sources into your writing by paraphrasing, summarizing, or using
direct quotes. With each of these techniques, you must always cite the original work.

Paraphrasing is using another author’s idea, but expressing it in your own words and without
quotation marks, since is it no longer a word-for-word quotation. A proper paraphrase is
substantially different from the original text.
Summarizing condenses the main idea of a whole text, or of several texts, into a substantially
shorter form while capturing the most important elements.
A direct quotation uses exactly the same words as the text you are taking it from, and it puts the
exact words in quotation marks. Always include the page number, when possible, when citing a
direct quotation: (Smith 116).
 Know How to Accurately Cite Your Sources
Knowing how to cite your sources properly is one of the most important skills to have in order to
avoid plagiarism. Anytime you paraphrase, summarize, or use a direct quote in your research
assignment, you must provide a citation in the text and list the source in your bibliography. We’ll
cover exactly how to do that in the next section.

Let’s return to Marvin’s research. He’s already learned from the online professor
about walking, talking, and cooking with his sources. Now the professor reminds Marvin
about one more important step for utilizing sources in his research.
DOCUMENTING SOURCES

O-Prof: In college writing, if you use a source in a paper, you’re expected to let the reader know
exactly how to find that source as well. Providing this “source address” information for your
sources is known as documenting your sources.
Marvin: What do you mean by a “source address”?
O-Prof: It’s directions for finding the source. A mailing address tells you how to find a person: the
house number, street, city, state, and zip code. To help your readers find your sources, it’s
customary to give them the name of the author; the title of the book or article or website; and
other information such as date, location of publication, publisher, even the database in which a
source is located. Or, if it’s a website, you might give the name of the site and/or the date on
which you accessed it. Source documentation can be complicated, because the necessary source
address information differs for different types of sources (e.g., books vs. journal articles,
electronic vs. print). Additionally, different disciplines (e.g., history, philosophy, psychology,
literature, etc.) use different “address” formats. Eventually, you’ll become familiar with the
documentation conventions for your own academic major, but source documentation takes a lot
of practice. In the meantime, your teachers and various writing handbooks can provide
instructions on what information you’ll need.
Marvin: Do I really need to include all that information? A lot of times, the sources I use are
readings my teachers have assigned, so they already know where to find them.
O-Prof: Your teachers don’t always know where all your sources are from, and they also want you
to get into the habit of source documentation. And what about your other readers? If they’re
deeply interested in your topic, they may want to find more information than you’ve included in
your paper. Your source documentation allows them to find the original source. And there are
other reasons for documenting sources. It can help readers understand your own position on a
topic, because they can see which authors you agree with and which you don’t. It also shows
readers you’ve taken time to investigate your topic and aren’t just writing off the top of your
head. If readers see that your ideas are based on trustworthy sources, they’re more likely to trust
what you say.

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

CC LICENSED CONTENT, ORIGINAL
 Integrating sources checklist. Authored by: Kim Louie for Lumen Learning. License: CC BY:
Attribution
 Revision and Adaptation. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY
 Using Information Ethically: Avoiding Plagiarism. Authored by: Lindsey McLean, Susan Gardner
Archambault, and Elisa Slater Acosta. Provided by: Loyola Marymount University William H.
Hannon Library. Located at: electra.lmu.edu. Project: Lion's Guide to Research and the
Library. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
 Quote Sandwich, From Chapter 5: Critical Thinking, Source Evaluations, and Analyzing Academic
Writing. Authored by: Denise Snee, Kristin Houlton, Nancy Heckel. Edited by Kimberly
Jacobs. Located at: lgdata.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com. License: CC BY-NC-SA:
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
 Walk, Talk, Cook, Eat: A Guide to Using Sources. Authored by: Cynthia R. Haller. Located
at: www.saylor.org/. Project: Writing Spaces. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike