AVOIDING

PLAGIARISMUsing MLA Style

The Academic Resource Center presents a tutorial on…

What is plagiarism?

Deliberate Plagiarism

Copying or buying a paper Recycling a paper from another

class Using information from a source

without citing

Unintentional Plagiarism Paraphrasing too close to the

original (patchwriting) Copying and pasting online

sources Forgetting to name the source

What kind of information isn’t

necessary to acknowledge?

COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Found in 4-5 other sources without being cited

Common Knowledge

General knowledge Failure of sub prime mortgages played a large role in the economic downturn of 2008.

Specific to a Field George Balanchine is regarded as one of the foremost contemporary ballet choreographers of the twentieth century.

What kind ofinformation

requires

acknowledging the source?

Direct Quotations

Roberta Seid argues, “We have elevated the pursuit of a lean, fat-free body into a new religion” (368).

Stanley Milgram’s 1964 experiment on obedience found, “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process” (191).

Paraphrased facts or statistics that most people wouldn’t know or easily locate.

Fort Pillow, Tennessee, which sat on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, had been held by the Union for two years. It was garrisoned by 580 men, 292 of them from United States Colored Heavy and Light Artillery regiments, 285 from the white Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. Nathan Bedford Forrest commanded about 1,500 troops (Cimprich and Mainfort 293-94).

Paraphrased claims, theories, interpretations of others.

Balanchine went through an artistic transformation that only intensified his desire to develop the essence of the old system and extend and modify tradition (McDonagh 49).

Ideas from others via personal communication such as a professor, friend, acquaintance.

According to Prof. Blystone from a lecture on February 9, 2008, the notion of the deity determines all practices in the culture.

How do I avoid plagiarizing?

Research DO’s

Take notes in your own words. Indicate in your note-taking when

adding your comments. Copy direct quotations word for word.

Use quotation marks. Note page number! Keep track of all bibliographic

information and the date you retrieved the information if from the Web.

DON’T

Cut and paste material directly into your paper.

Patchwrite. Copying a passage and changing only an occasional word here and there.

Forget to cite!

Example of PatchwritingExample of Patchwriting

The original passage:– Students frequently overuse direct quotation in

taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. 1976. 46.

Plagiarized paraphrase (patchwriting)

- Students oftentimes rely on direct quotes when note taking; consequently, they use too many quotations in the final paper (Lester 46).

Example of a ParaphraseTaken from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab.http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/01/

The original passage:– Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking

notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. 1976. 46-47.

A legitimate paraphrase:– In research papers students often quote

excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).