English 9 / Unit 10: Vocabulary and Research Skills
10.7 Avoiding Plagiarism
Notes
Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own. It is a serious academic offense.
- Forms: copying text without quotation marks, paraphrasing without credit, using someone's ideas or images without citing, submitting work written by someone else.
- Patchwriting: changing a few words of a source but keeping its structure. This is still plagiarism.
- To avoid it: take careful notes, quote exact words with quotation marks, paraphrase fully in your own words and structure, and cite every source.
- Common knowledge (facts widely known, such as "George Washington was the first U.S. president") usually does not need a citation.
Practice
Which action is plagiarism?
Changing a few words without credit is still plagiarism.
Which fact most likely does NOT need a citation?
Widely known facts are common knowledge.
A student paraphrases an article in her own words. What must she still do?
The idea still came from the source.
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