Plagiarism is a serious offense that can result in academic probation or even expulsion. Occasionally, even a good student can plagiarize if she forgets to reference a quotation or relies too heavily on one source. In order to avoid plagiarism, you should always double check your paper before turning it in. Modern conveniences, such as the internet, make it easy to find plagiarized material.

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Be sure that you've taken ideas from each work and given your own twist on the idea. When you take a direct quote from another work, you definitely need to reference that work. You can find services online or through downloadable software that will check your work for plagiarism.

These programs divide your text into segments and search for the same phrases online. You'll receive a report that tells you which sections of your paper may have been plagiarized. Currently, the programs aren't sophisticated enough to detect when you've legitimately quoted a source.

Compare the report to your paper if the section is something that you've referenced, you don't need to worry, but if it's bringing up other points of plagiarism, you need to change the paper. There are many software options available see wikipedia's page on plagiarism detection , some free, and some paid. To my knowledge, one of the most commonly used commercial options available is turnitin there is also turnitin's student version, writecheck. These options can be somewhat expensive though plagscan, for example, charges by the word: $13 gets you 50,0 words of plagiarism checking.

There are several free services, but they should be used with caution and their limitations should be understood. Some, for example, simply do what you've been doing: they take the sentences and search in google. Do a pretty good job in my experience from a long time ago , but still only match direct matches, and won't catch things where a word or two have been changed here or there. I've since stopped using them because they have a somewhat sketchy data retention and policy. Whatever you upload, they add your work to their study site or essay mill or whatever you want to call it. To viper's credit, they are transparent about how they use your data! important note. The bottom line with free is that unfortunately you need to be very careful with them be sure you closely read their privacy policies and their data retention policies.

Commercial services may also retain your data, but generally offer an option to purge your account nevertheless, it never hurts to read the terms of use and other relevant documents, particularly in cases of sensitive information. if you are checking against a known local database of documents which it doesn't sound like you're doing, but i thought i'd mention it , you can check out wcopyfind. You might use this software, for example, if you have a database of papers students have submitted in the same course offered in different years, to check whether a student in the current batch of students is plagiarizing from an earlier student or from someone else in their class. Your question isn 039 t clear whether it was you who plagiarised for your paper or your work got plagiarised by someone else. That means you will get a c for the course if you ace everything else, more likely a d, which does not transfer to other schools. I 039 ve seen some students try to bluster their way out with silly threats about filing lawsuits. Written by margaret procter, writing support from the code of behaviour on academic matters: it shall be an offence for a student knowingly: d to represent as one's own any idea or expression of an idea or work of another in any academic examination or term test or in connection with any other form of academic work, i.e.

To commit plagiarism. wherever in the code an offence is described as depending on knowing , the offence shall likewise be deemed to have been committed if the person ought reasonably to have known. you've already heard the warnings about plagiarism. Obviously it's against the rules to buy essays or copy chunks from your friend's homework, and it's also plagiarism to borrow passages from books or articles or web sites without identifying them. You know that the purpose of any paper is to show your own thinking, not create a patchwork of borrowed ideas. But you may still be wondering how you're supposed to give proper references to all the reading you've done and all the ideas you've encountered. The point of documenting sources in academic papers is not just to avoid unpleasant visits to the dean's office, but to demonstrate that you know what is going on in your field of study.

It's also a courtesy to your readers because it helps them consult the material you've found. So mentioning what others have said doesn't lessen the credit you get for your own thinking in fact, it adds to your credibility. For one thing, the different systems for typing up references are admittedly a nuisance.

But the real challenge is establishing the relationship of your thinking to the reading you've done yes, that includes the internet. can't i avoid problems just by listing every source in the bibliography? no, you need to integrate your acknowledgements into what you're saying. Give the reference as soon as you've mentioned the idea you're using, not just at the end of the paragraph. It's often a good idea to name the authors x says and y argues against x, and then indicate your own stand a more inclusive perspective, however. The examples in this file and the one on standard documentation formats show various wordings.

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Have a look at journal articles in your discipline to see how they refer to their sources. if i put the ideas into my own words, do i still have to clog up my pages with all those names and numbers? sorry yes, you do. In academic papers, you need to keep mentioning authors and pages and dates to show how your ideas are related to those of the experts. It's sensible to use your own words because that saves space and lets you connect ideas smoothly. But whether you quote a passage directly in quotation marks, paraphrase it closely in your own words, or just summarize it rapidly, you need to identify the source then and there.

That applies to internet sources too: you still need author and date as well as title and url. the handout standard documentation formats gives examples for a range of types. but i didn't know anything about the subject until i started this paper. Do i have to give an acknowledgement for every point i make? you're safer to over reference than to skimp. But you can cut down the clutter by recognizing that some ideas are common knowledge in the field that is, taken for granted by people knowledgeable about the topic. Facts easily found in standard reference books are considered common knowledge: the date of the armistice for world war i, for example, or the present population of canada.

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You don't need to name a specific source for them, even if you learned them only when doing your research. In some disciplines, information covered in class lectures doesn't need acknowledgement. Some interpretive ideas may also be so well accepted that they don't need referencing: that picasso is a distinguished modernist painter, for instance, or that smoking is harmful to health. Check with your professor or ta if you're in doubt whether a specific point is considered common knowledge in your field.

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how can i tell what's my own idea and what has come from somebody else? careful record keeping helps. Always write down the author, title and publication information including the specific identifying information for online publications so you can attach names and dates to specific ideas. Don't paste passages from online sources into your draft: that's asking for trouble. As you read any text online or on the page summarize useful points in your own words. If you record a phrase or sentence you might want to quote, put quotation marks around it in your notes to remind yourself that you're copying the author's exact words, whether electronically or in handwriting. If you record a distinctive phrase or sentence you might want to quote, put quotation marks around it in your notes to remind yourself that you're copying the author's exact words.