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How to Avoid Plagiarism
Plagiarizing something means copying facts, ideas, and/or words without
giving credit to the person from whom you got the information.
Authors' words, opinions, statistics, facts, and information require
either a footnote, quotation marks, and/or an in-text parenthetical reference
giving credit to the person who wrote the information.
Here is a paragraph taken from Jack Gannon's The Week the World Heard
Gallaudet.
| Astrid
Goodstein, a Gallaudet faculty member, entered the beauty salon for her
regular appointment proudly wearing her DPN button. ("I was married to that
button that week!" she later confided.) When Sandy, her regular hairdresser,
saw the button, he spoke and gestured, "Never! Never! Never!" Offended,
Astrid turned around and headed for the door, but stopped short of leaving.
She decided to keep her appointment, confessing later that at that moment
her sense of principles had lost out to her vanity. Later she realized that
her hairdresser had thought she was pushing for a deaf U.S. President! |
- Suppose you want to use information from the above paragraph in your paper.
The easiest way to avoid plagiarizing would be to use quotation marks
to indicate that the words you use are not your own.
- If your quote contains less than 40 words, use quotation marks and either
a footnote or an in-text parenthetical reference.
| "Astrid
Goodstein, a Gallaudet faculty member, entered the beauty salon
for her regular appointment proudly wearing her DPN button"
(Gannon 187). |
- If you want to use the entire passage, and the quote will contain more than 40 words, start a new line and indent
the whole quotation 5 spaces from the left margin. Do not use quotation
marks. Give credit to the author by either using a footnote or
an in-text parenthetical reference.
| Jack Gannon tells of a funny story
that happened to a deaf teacher during DPN:
Astrid
Goodstein, a Gallaudet faculty member, entered the beauty salon
for her regular appointment proudly wearing her DPN button. ("I
was married to that button that week!" she later confided.) When
Sandy, her regular hairdresser, saw the button, he spoke and
gestured, "Never! Never! Never!" Offended, Astrid turned around
and headed for the door, but stopped short of leaving. She decided
to keep her appointment, confessing later that at that moment her
sense of principles had lost out to her vanity. Later she realized
that her hairdresser had thought she was pushing for a deaf U.S.
President! (Gannon 187)
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- When you paraphrase, you must give credit to the author.
Paraphrasing means summarizing someone else's ideas in your own words. This
is a valuable writing technique, but if proper credit is not given to the
author, plagiarism occurs.
-
Unacceptable paraphrase:
| Astrid Goodstein
who is a Gallaudet faculty member came into the beauty salon with her DPN button. Her hairdresser, Sandy, saw the button and said, "Never!
Never! Never!" Astrid, feeling offended, went to the door but she
changed her mind and went ahead with her appointment. Later, she began
to understand that her hairdresser thought she was rallying for a deaf
U.S. President. |
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Acceptable paraphrase:
| Astrid Goodstein's
hairdresser, Sandy, misinterpreted her DPN button as her rally for the
future deaf U.S. President (Gannon 187). |
Four important rules to remember in order to avoid plagiarizing something:
- Your instructor is your best resource if you have any questions regarding
whether or not your information is documented accurately.
- Put a footnote or an in-text citation at the end of any idea or fact which
you found in a book or article, whether or not you change the words.
- Exact quotations should either be put in quotation marks or indented and
a footnote or in-text citation should be used to indicate the source
- When in doubt, go ahead and document the source.
*Important note: Documenting sources helps your reader find more information
as well as helping you avoid plagiarism.
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