Avoiding Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is presenting the words or thoughts of another writer as if they were your own.  When you write a paper, and you learn information from other sources to use in your paper, you must always tell your reader where you learned the information.  If you don't, it's considered plagiarism.  Whether you are quoting directly or putting the ideas of an author into your own words, which is called paraphrasing, you must formally acknowledge the source of your material.  Even though most plagiarism is unintentional, there are serious consequences for plagiarizing in writing assignments.

In order to acknowledge your source and avoid plagiarizing it, you must always cite your source by giving your reader information that will correspond to a bibliography page of your paper.  These are called in-text citations. Depending on the style you are using, you will need, at the very least, and author and a page number included in your in-text citation.  You also must include a bibliography (sometimes called a works cited page or a references page).

Remember, every idea (direct quote or paraphrase) from every source that you use in your paper must be cited even though you may have used your own words to explain the idea.

The following link provides information about three common documentation styles that are used here at MacEwan:
www.macewan.ca/documentationstyle

Click on the link for information on MacEwan's Academic Integrity Policy.