Michael Lorenzen LIB September 2003 Used with permission from the author.

 If you use someone else’s writing without putting it in quotes, you have blatantly plagiarized.  Even if you add the source in your bibliography, it is still plagiarism.

 Be careful about rewriting someone else’s words. If your sentences use many of the same words and grammatical structure as the original source, it could be construed as plagiarism. Just put the text in your own words.

 Give credit to unique ideas others have thought up.  If you present the ideas of another without crediting them, you have plagiarized them.  Obvious ideas, like know facts, don’t have to be credited.  When in doubt, attribute (tell where you got it)

 Always put quotes from text in quotations. Never forget to do this as this is the easiest way to get accused of plagiarism.

 Be sure you are not just rearranging or replacing words.  Rewrite the phrase in your own words and credit the original source.  Double check what you have written by comparing it with the original writing.

 Don’t surf to paper mills (sites that provide papers)  Don’t use the Web to look for “easy’ paper sources.  Don’t turn in other student’s papers as your own.

 Some students inadvertently plagiarize from online sources. They do not understand all the rules for properly using and citing sources. (“I cited the web site didn’t I?)

 Type in a key sentence from the paper as a phrase search. For example, type “The students in my LIB 197 class are good.”  Google indexes so many sites that even if the student didn’t use Google, a phrase search may find the original source anyway.

 A good supplement to Google is All the Web at  There are commercial vendors as well. They scan papers against known cheat sites for a fee. This includes Turnitin.com and Wordcheck.com.

 LibraryInstruction.Com. Michael Lorenzen April