Skip to Main Content

Preventing Plagiarism: Home

Strategies to Deter Plagiarism

Definition:

Plagiarism Literary theft.

Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own. 

Copyright laws protect writers' words as their legal property. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote.

"Plagiarism." The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin. E.D. Hirsch, JosephF. Kett, and JamesS. Trefil. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 17 July 2015.

What is Plagiarism?

 

Some of the most common forms of plagiarism occur when you: 

  • Copy and paste from texts or websites into the text of your document without proper attribution
  • Mashup information changing only a few words - this activity is often referred to as "patch-writing"
  • Don't cite your sources in a bibliography
  • Cite your sources incorrectly within the text of the document

Quick Help Desk Resources

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting: A Guide to Doing it Right!

This video developed by the Genesee Library provides a good overview on how to summarize, paraphrase, and quote effectively.