Avoiding Plagiarism

Students can avoid plagiarism by maintaining good research habits and paying attention to the basic rules of writing and documentation.

In general, remember that you must credit the source whenever you

• use another person's idea, opinion or theory
• paraphrase the words of another person (spoken or written)
• quote another person
• use facts, statistics, graphs, drawing, video, audio or other creative expression

The Research Stage

Plagiarism often begins in the notetaking stage of the research process. Before you set out to research your subject, you should have a clear question in mind so that the notes you take will be relevant. If you are going to a library and can not take the materials home, you should be especially careful to take down the exact details of the information and your source. One way to do this is to use one index card for each idea or quotation you gather.
However you take down the information, you should

• Keep careful and complete information on your source by accurately noting the author, title, publisher, editor, date of publication, place of publication, and any additional information including the page numbers where notes or quotes were taken (www.google.ca doesn't cut it!)
• Keep track and distinguish your ideas from the ideas of others
• Recognize the distinction between words that are your own and words that are not your own; carefully note what is your idea, someone else's idea or someone's direct quote
• Ensure that quoted material is exactly as in the original source-- be precise

The Writing Stage

Once your research is done, keep in mind the following points:

• Organize your work in an original way rather than following the pattern used by one of your sources
• Use your own words and ideas to frame and control your work
• Support those ideas by either quoting or paraphrasing the work of your sources
• Give credit for copied, adapted or paraphrased material using in-text citations and the MLA format
• When paraphrasing, state the idea in your own words. Don't just make superficial changes to the source.
• Distinguish between what is common knowledge and what is not common knowledge and needs to be documented (for example, it is common knowledge that Ottawa is the capital of Canada)
• When in doubt, cite your source

The Editing Stage

• Read your work carefully. Is it clear what your ideas are and what the ideas of your sources are? Ask yourself if there is enough of your own work in the project. Do you understand every concept? Is the vocabulary your own?

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