AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

Take very careful notes, enclosing exactly quoted material in quotation marks.  Include in your notes all bibliographic information to properly cite your source.

Use proper documentation, always citing the following:

• A source may be anything, "a book, an article, a movie, an interview, a microfilmed document, a downloaded image, an anonymous newsgroup posting." (Aaron 134)

  Common knowledge is: "the standard information of a field of study as well as folk literature and common sense observations."

  "If you do not know a subject well enough to determine whether a piece of information is common knowledge, make a record of the source.  As you read more about the subject the information may come up repeatedly without acknowledgment, in which case it is probably common knowledge.  But if you're still in doubt when you finish your research, always acknowledge the source."  (Aaron 134)

Cite sources found on the Internet:

Internet resources must be acknowledged just as any other source would.  The ability to download and cut and paste requires particular care when using Internet resources in your research.

The following tips for using Internet resources  are paraphrased from The Holt Handbook (5th edition, p. 617-618 ):

Check out the Library's Citing Your Sources web pages.

If you're not sure if it's plagiarism, check with your faculty member.

The citations on these pages follow the Modern Language Association style and refer to the books listed under Print Resources. Be sure to use the document style required by your instructor.

Last updated: 5 January 2006