How to Avoid Plagiarism by Evan Grant

Just recently, an author of a website that I was using to gain information from boldly accused me of plagiarizing his work. Although I was not found guilty of the accusation, I felt that providing some tips about how to avoid plagiarism would benefit all of us. Hopefully the rest of you don’t run into the same troubles as I did! :)

CITE YOUR SOURCES!

Whenever you are doing research for a paper be sure to cite every book, website, newspaper article or any other source that you want to use information from. I find the easiest way to write a bibliography is to go to www.easybib.com. If you type in the unique ISBN number in a book or the URL of the website you used, it will automatically write out a bibliography.

When quoting or paraphrasing, it is important to cite it right afterwards. Simply write the author(s) last name and the page number it is found (if you are using a book) in parenthesis.

For example: (Grant 117)

There will be times when you start a paper and you don’t have previous knowledge of the topic. In this case it is okay to over-cite your information. Don’t worry too much about it looking cluttered because of the parenthesis everywhere. It’s better to be safe than sorry. One way to lessen the amount of parenthetical citations is to figure out which information is common knowledge in the field. You don’t have to cite where you found out that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president or that smoking causes lung disease. (Procter)



Check out this teacher's parody of "Before He Cheats"


Procter, Margaret. "How Not to Plagiarize." University of Toronto. 12 Apr. 2009 http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html.

"Avoiding Plagiarism." The Writing Place, Northwestern University's peer tutoring center for writers. 12 Apr. 2009 .

Lunsford, Andrea, and Robert Connors. St. Martin's Handbook. 3rd. ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.