Plagiarism
Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) defines plagiarism as “the action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.”
In plain language, plagiarism is taking someone else’s work, ideas, images, sounds or any other creative product and passing it off as one’s own without proper acknowledgment or documentation. Plagiarism is also a moral, ethical, and legal issue.
Some plagiarism is blatant and some plagiarism is unintentional. To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use:
•
Another person’s idea, opinion, or theory
•Any facts, statistics, graphics, drawings or any information not
considered "common knowledge"
•Quotations (written or spoken)
•Paraphrasing & Summarizing
When paraphrasing, you must significantly change the original or you need to give credit. It is plagiarism if you only change a few words, move the order of the text, or keep the original sentence structure.
To avoid unintentional plagiarism, check your paraphrase against the original text to be sure that you have not used the same phrases or words and that the information is accurate.
IF IN DOUBT…..CITE!
