Plagiarism

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Plagiarism

• Karl Stolley Allen Brizee
• The OWL at Purdue

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Overview Contradictions

• Plagiarism
• The uncredited use, both intentional and
  unintentional, of somebody elses words or ideas.
  
• Young writers often arent aware, or dont know
  how to properly give credit where credit is
  due.
• Gaining a familiarity with these rules is
  critically important.

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• A charge of plagiarism can have severe
  consequences
• Expulsion from a university
• Loss of a job
• A writers loss of credibility professional
  standing

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Unquestionable Acts of Plagiarism

• Buying, stealing, or borrowing a paper and
  passing it off as your own
• Copying an entire paper or article from the web
• Hiring someone to write your paper for you
• Copying large sections of text from a source
  without quotation marks or proper citation

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The Grey Areas

• Using the words of a source too closely when
  paraphrasing (restating or rewording)
• Building on someone elses ideas without citing
  their spoken or written work
• Teachers at our school see no difference in
  deliberate and accidental plagiarism

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A Brief List of What needs to be Credited or
Documented

• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book,
  newspaper, song, TV program, letter,
  advertisement, or any other medium
• Information you gain through interviewing or
  conversing with another person, face to face,
  over the phone, or in writing
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase

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• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations,
  charts, pictures, or other visual materials
• When you reuse or repost any electronically-availa
  ble media, including images, audio, video, or
  other media
• Bottom line Document any words, ideas, or other
  productions that originate somewhere outside of
  you

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Certain Things That Do Not Need Documentation

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own
  observations insights, and you own conclusions
  about a subject
• When you are writing up your own results obtained
  through lab or field experiments
• When you use your own artwork, digital
  photographs, video, audio, etc.

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• When you are using common knowledge, things
  like folklore, common sense observations, myths,
  urban legends, and historical events (but NOT
  historical documents)
• When you are using generally-accepted facts,
  e.g., pollution is bad for the environment

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Deciding if Something is Common Knowledge

• You can regard something as common knowledge if
  you find the same information undocumented in at
  least 5 credible sources.
• It might be common knowledge if you think the
  information youre presenting is something your
  readers will already know, or something that a
  person could easily find in general reference
  sources.
• When in doubt, cite!!!

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Best Practices for Research and Drafting
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Reading Note-Taking

• In your notes, always mark someone elses words
  with a big Q, for quote or use big quotation
  marks
• Indicate in your notes which ideas are taken from
  sources with a big S
• Mark your own insights with ME
• Record which source you are using in your notes

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Writing Paraphrases or Summaries

• Use a statement that credits the source somewhere
  in the paraphrase or summary, e.g., According to
  Dara Kelly,
• If youre having trouble summarizing, try writing
  your paraphrase or summary of a text without
  looking at the original, relying on your own
  memory and notes

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• Check your paraphrase or summary against the
  original text correct any errors in content and
  accuracy, and be sure to use quotation marks to
  set off any exact phrases from the original text.
• Check your paraphrase or summary against sentence
  and paragraph structure, as copying those is also
  plagiarism

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• Put quotation marks around any unique words or
  phrases that you cannot or do not want to change,
  e.g., Playing such an iconic character is what
  Cusack enjoys (Kelly).

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Writing Direct Quotations

• Keep the source authors name in the same
  sentence as the quote
• Mark the quote with quotation marks, or set it
  off from your text in its own block (4 or more
  lines of continuous quote)
• Quote no more material than is necessary if a
  short phrase will suffice, dont quote the entire
  paragraph

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• To shorten quotes by removing extra information,
  use ellipsis points () to indicate omitted text,
  keeping in mind that
• There ellipsis points indicates an in-sentence
  ellipsis, and four points for an ellipsis between
  two sentences.
• e.g., Humiliated by his povertyPoe returned to
  Richmond and visited the home of his fiancee,
  Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had
  become engaged to another man in Poes absence
  (Poes Life).

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• To give context to a quote or otherwise add
  wording to it, place added words in brackets.
  be careful not to editorialize or make any
  additions that skew the original meaning of the
  quotedo that in your main text, e.g.,
• CORRECT With those he loved he was very
  gentle and devoted (Edgar Allan Poe).

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• Use quotes that will have the biggest impact in
  your paper
• Too many direct quotes from sources may weaken
  your credibility, as though you have nothing to
  say yourself

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Writing About Anothers Ideas

• Note that the name of the ideas originator in
  the sentence or throughout a paragraph about the
  idea
• Use parenthetical citations to refer readers to
  additional sources about the idea, as necessary
• Be sure to use quotation marks around key phrases
  or words that the ideas originator used to
  describe the idea

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Revising, Proofreading, and Finalizing Your Paper

• Proofread and cross-check with your notes and
  sources to make sure that anything coming from an
  outside source is acknowledged in some
  combination of the following ways
• In-text citation, otherwise known as
  parenthetical citations
• Works Cited Page
• Quotation marks around short quotes longer
  quotes set off by themselves

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• Indirect quotations citing a source that cites
  another source
• If you have any questions about citations, ask
  your teacher well in advance of your papers due
  date, so if you have to make any adjustments to
  your citations, you have time to do them.

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Maintaining Drafts of Your Paper

• Sometimes innocent, hard-working students are
  accused of plagiarism because a dishonest student
  steals their work.
• Always protect your papers by password
  protecting, saving in multiple locations, locking
  your computer when away, and saving as multiple
  names.