Plagiarism 

Plagiarism is the act of taking ideas, words, opinions, or theories from someone else and using them as your own without giving credit to the other person.  Essentially, when you plagiarize, you are stealing someone else’s work. 

Examples of plagiarism are as simple as taking one word from someone else’s work, to taking one whole paragraph, to stealing an entire paper and calling it your own, thereby not giving credit to the person who created the work 

Even if you are summarizing what you have read, putting the ideas into your own words, you must document the source that you are summarizing. 

Even though you have used your own words, the ideas were someone else’s before you used them.  The only undocumented pieces of a research paper are going to be your personal ideas, opinions, evaluations, and analyses. 

Plagiarism is a punishable offense: be aware of your school’s/teacher’s plagiarism policy and be willing to accept responsibility for your actions, whether they be deliberate or accidental. 

See In-Text Documentation for ways to avoid plagiarism.

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