How to Avoid Cheating

from Purdue University's Website:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html

Choosing When to Give Credit

Need to Document

No Need to Document

When you are using or referring to somebody else’s words or ideas from a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium

When you use information gained through interviewing another person

When you copy the exact words or a "unique phrase" from somewhere

When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, and pictures

When you use ideas that others have given you in conversations or over email

When you are writing your own experiences, your own observations, your own insights, your own thoughts, your own conclusions about a subject

When you are using "common knowledge" — folklore, common sense observations, shared information within your field of study or cultural group

When you are compiling generally accepted facts

When you are writing up your own experimental results

Making Sure You Are Safe

Action during the writing process

Appearance on the finished product

When researching, note-taking, and interviewing

 Mark everything that is someone else’s words with a big Q (for quote) or with big quotation marks

Indicate in your notes which ideas are taken from sources (S) and which are your own insights (ME)

Record all of the relevant documentation information in your notes

 Proofread and check with your notes (or photocopies of sources) to make sure that anything taken from your notes is acknowledged in some combination of the ways listed below:
  • In-text citation
  • Footnotes
  • Bibliography
  • Quotation marks
  • Indirect quotations

When paraphrasing and summarizing

 First, write your paraphrase and summary without looking at the original text, so you rely only on your memory.

Next, check your version with the original for content, accuracy, and mistakenly borrowed phrases

 Begin your summary with a statement giving credit to the source: According to Jonathan Kozol, ...

Put any unique words or phrases that you cannot change, or do not want to change, in quotation marks: ... "savage inequalities" exist throughout our educational system (Kozol).

When quoting directly

 Keep the person’s name near the quote in your notes, and in your paper

Select those direct quotes that make the most impact in your paper -- too many direct quotes may lessen your credibility and interfere with your style

 Mention the person’s name either at the beginning of the quote, in the middle, or at the end

Put quotation marks around the text that you are quoting

Indicate added phrases in brackets ([ ]) and omitted text with ellipses (. . .)

When quoting indirectly

 Keep the person’s name near the text in your notes, and in your paper

Rewrite the key ideas using different words and sentence structures than the original text

 Mention the person’s name either at the beginning of the information, or in the middle, or at that end

Double check to make sure that your words and sentence structures are different than the original text

Deciding if Something is "Common Knowledge"

Material is probably common knowledge if . . .


Exercises for Practice

Below are some situations in which writers need to decide whether or not they are running the risk of plagiarizing. In the Y/N column, indicate if you would need to document (Yes), or if it is not necessary to provide quotation marks or a citation (No). If you do need to give the source credit in some way, explain how you would handle it. If not, explain why.

Situation

Y/N

If yes, what do you do? If no, why?

    1. You are writing new insights about your own experiences.

    

    2. You are using an editorial from your school's newspaper with which you disagree.

    

    3. You use some information from a source without ever quoting it directly.

    

    4. You have no other way of expressing the exact meaning of a text without using the original source verbatim.

    

    5. You mention that many people in your discipline belong to a certain organization.

    

    6. You want to begin your paper with a story that one of your classmates told about her experiences in Bosnia.

    

    7. The quote you want to use is too long, so you leave out a couple of phrases.

    

    8. You really like the particular phrase somebody else made up, so you use it.

    

(Adapted from Aaron)