Using Examples and Avoiding plagiarism

Using Examples: As we’ve seen from the basic essay format that we’ve gone over, using evidence (examples, quotations, statistics, and various sorts of specific facts) helps us build a solid paper. Today, we are going to look at some specific strategies for helping us use evidence effectively and avoid plagiarism.

What is Plagiarism? Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s ideas, thoughts, words, or original work as your own without giving credit to that person.

Two types of Plagiarism: Intentional: Intentional plagiarism is pretty self-explanatory. It involves the individual knowingly and purposefully taking the words or thoughts of others and presenting it as his or her own. This includes turning in a paper that is not your own and copying and pasting things into your paper without quotation marks or giving the source credit.

Two types of Plagiarism: The second type of Plagiarism is unintentional Plagiarism. With this type of Plagiarism, the individual is unaware of the rule governing the use of sources and mistakenly does not credit material used. This can include forgetting to put quotation marks around a credited quote or not realizing that some material in the paper needs to be cited.

Avoiding Plagiarism: When using information that’s been obtained from somewhere else, there are two ways to integrate it into your paper: Quotation and Paraphrase. To avoid plagiarism with either of these, we need to begin by using a signal phrase or introductory sentence (much as we’ve learned to do with our summaries). However, there are some additional problems that we need to look out for.

Problems with Paraphrase: Sometimes students when they paraphrase, use too much of the original language from the source. Even though there may be a signal phrase, this is still suspicious and problematic. Look at the example of the original text and the problematic student paraphrase on page 402 of your Hacker book. After that, look at the improved paraphrase on the same page. What are the notable differences?

Example from Hacker Original: Antiobesity laws encounter strong opposition from some quarters on the grounds that they constitute paternalistic intervention into lifestyle choices and enfeeble the notion of personal responsibility. Such arguments echo those made in the early days of tobacco regulation.

Example from Hacker Unacceptable paraphrase: Health policy experts Mello, Studdart, and Brennan argue that antiobesity laws encounter strong opposition from some people because they interfere with lifestyle choices and decrease the feeling of personal responsibility. These arguments mirror those made in the early days of tobacco regulation (2602).

Example from Hacker Acceptable paraphrase: As health policy experts Mello, Studdert, and Brennan point out, opposition to food and beverage regulation is similar to the opposition to early tobacco legislation: the public views the issue as one of personal responsibility rather than one requiring government intervention.

Exercise: Get out one of the essays that we’ve read for the class. Pick a passage to use. Read the passage carefully. Then put the essay out of sight and try to write a paraphrase of the passage, making sure that you have cited the source correctly. Once you are done writing your paraphrase, check it against the original. How close is it? Have a partner check it.