Plagiarism and Paraphrasing How to Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Avoiding Plagiarism Since teachers and administrators may not distinguish between deliberate and accidental plagiarism, the heart of avoiding plagiarism is to make sure you give credit where it is due.

When Do I Need To Tell Where Information Comes From? When you are using or referring to somebody else’s words or ideas. Print, song, film, letter… anything that is not your original thought.

How Do I Give Credit? In some cases you can simply say, “John Smith, author of The Common Man, says that …” A research paper is nothing but other people’s ideas, so things get a little more complicated.

MLA Format In your research paper you will use what is called MLA format to cite information. At the end of each chunk of information you will cite the author and page where you found the information like this (Smith 12).

MLA Format At the end of your paper, you will have what is called a works cited page. You will put all of the information needed to find your source on this page.

MLA Format We will discuss MLA format more later. For now you need to understand that you must either put the information into your own words COMPLETELY (this does not mean changing a word or two) or put the “information into quotes” like this example. In either case you must cite your source like this (Williams 236).

A Paraphrase is... Your own version of information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form that you have written yourself. A paraphrase includes all important information, it just puts it in different words.

Steps to Paraphrasing 1. Reread the original information until you understand its full meaning. 2. Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card without looking at the original. 3. Check with the original to make sure that your version has all of the important information in a new form.

Steps to Paraphrasing Continued 4. Use quotation marks to identify any unique words or phrases you have borrowed exactly from the source. 5. Record the source (including the page) on your note card so that you can credit it easily.

Example The original passage: Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final research paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.

Example A plagiarized version: Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

Example A legitimate paraphrase: In research papers students often quote too much, failing to keep quoted material down to unique words and phrases only. Since the problem usually starts during note taking, it is important to minimize the material recorded word for word in your notes (Lester 46-47).