Avoiding Plagiarism

See Tuchman’s original passage.

Never lift another writer’s words or ideas without giving that writer due credit and transforming them into words of your own. If you do use words or ideas without giving credit, you are plagiarizing. When you honestly summarize and paraphrase, clearly show that the ideas are the originator’s, here Tuchman or Underhill. In contrast, the next examples are unacceptable paraphrases of Tuchman’s passage that use, without thanks, her ideas and even her very words. Finding such gross borrowings in a paper, an instructor might hear the ringing of a burglar alarm. The first example lifts both thoughts and words, underlined here with the lines in the original noted in the margin.

PLAGIARIZED THOUGHTS AND WORDS

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For more on managing a research project, see Ch. 30.

This writer did not understand the passage well enough to put Tuchman’s ideas in his or her own words. If you allow enough time to read, think, and write, you are likely to handle sources more effectively than those who procrastinate or rush through their research. The next example is a more subtle theft, lifting thoughts but not words.

PLAGIARIZED THOUGHTS

It’s not always easy to determine the truth about the everyday lives of people from past societies because bad news gets recorded a lot more frequently than good news does. Historical documents, like today’s news channels, tend to pick up on malice and disaster and ignore flat normality. If I were to base my opinion of the world on what is on the news, I would expect death and destruction around me all the time. Actually, I rarely come up against true disaster.

By using the first-person pronoun I, this student suggests that Tuchman’s ideas are his own. That is just as dishonest as quoting without using quotation marks, as reprehensible as not citing the source of ideas.

The next example fails to make clear which ideas belong to the writer and which to Tuchman.

For a tutorial on avoiding plagiarism, go to the interactive “Take Action” charts in Re:Writing.

PLAGIARIZED WITH FAULTY CREDIT

Barbara Tuchman explains that it can be difficult for historians to learn about the everyday lives of people who lived long ago because historical documents tend to record only bad news. Today’s news is like that, too: disaster, malice, and confusion take up a lot more room than happiness and serenity. Just as the ins and outs of our everyday lives go unreported, we can suspect that upheavals do not play as important a part in the making of history as they seem to.

For more on working with sources, see Chs. 12 and 31 as well as the Quick Research Guide. For more on quotation marks, ellipses, and brackets, see C3 in the Quick Editing Guide.

After rightly attributing ideas in the first sentence to Tuchman, the writer makes a comparison to today’s world in sentence 2. In sentence 3, she returns to Tuchman’s ideas without giving Tuchman credit. The placement of sentence 3 suggests that this last idea is the student’s, not Tuchman’s.

As you write, use ideas and words from your sources carefully, and credit those sources. Supply introductory and transitional comments to launch and attribute quotations, paraphrases, and summaries to the original source (“As Tuchman observes …”). Rely on quotation marks and other punctuation to show exactly which words come from your sources.

RESEARCH CHECKLIST

Avoiding Plagiarism

  • Have you identified the author of material you quote, paraphrase, or summarize? Have you credited the originator of facts and ideas you use?
  • Have you clearly shown where another writer’s ideas stop and yours begin?
  • Have you checked each paraphrase or summary against the original for accuracy? Do you use your own words? Do you avoid words and sentences close to those in the original? Do you avoid distorting the original meaning?
  • Have you checked each quotation against the original for accuracy? Have you used quotation marks for both passages and significant words taken directly from your source? Have you noted the page in the original?
  • Have you used an ellipsis mark (…) to show your omissions from the original? Have you used brackets ([ ]) to indicate your changes or additions in a quotation? Have you avoided distorting the original meaning?