Plan your writing assignments and avoid procrastination.

Students who are fall into plagiarism

traps are usually those who have procrastinated and then find themselves in a bind right before the paper
is due. Even if you're not tempted to deliberately pass off someone else's work as your own, you may get
careless about citing the work of others at crunch time. Consult these articles to learn more about
avoiding procrastination, managing your time, and planning your written assignments:

 A Five-Component Plan for Writing a Research Paper

 Strategies for Planning Writing Assignments
 A Student's Guide to Making the Most of Your Time
 Time Management Do's and Dont's: Conquering the Time-Management Monster
 10 Tips for Time Management

2. Know what plagiarism is. A good starting point is to test your knowledge of plagiarism with
this brief plagiarism quiz. In essence, you must credit any source that you quote directly. You must place
the souce's words in quotation marks and insert a citation in the style your professor requires. You must
also credit any source you paraphrase. You need not put these words in quotation marks as long as you
are not using the exact words the source used, but you must cite the source, again using your professor's
preferred style.

3. Know your professor's and your school's policies on plagiarism and citing sources. Being
aware of just how serious this offense is and what the specific consequences are in your class and school
will help keep you on your toes. Knowing the correct citation format (including where the citation needs
to be placed) is important is critical because failing to properly cite places you on the fringes of plagiarism.

4. Cite Internet sources, too. Just because something is freely available on the Internet doesn't mean
that it doesn't need to be cited. Internet sources must be cited, too, including materials from online
discussion groups and e-mails. Most citation styles for Internet sources are quite specific and a bit
different from the citation style for other sources, so be sure you know the correct style. Most citation
styles for Internet sources also require you to supply the date you retrieved the material, so if you are
printing out material from the Internet, set your browser preferences to include the date you are printing
the material out. Beware of copying material from the Internet and pasting it into your paper. Taking
notes on the material or printing it out (and then typing it into your paper) will increase the likelihood
that won't forget to credit it properly.

5. Take good notes and/or print out/photocopy all source information. If you are taking notes
from source materials, be sure to copy quotes accurately and don't lose track of which words are direct
quotes and which are paraphrases. It helps to make a visual distinction in your notes -- such as with
colored pens or highlighters -- between your own words and words of others that need to be cited.
Carefully note all the information you'll need for your citation, such as name of the work, author,
publisher, city and date of publication, and page numbers. Many students print out source material from
online library databases and make photocopies of pages from source materials such as books and
periodicals. Be sure when doing so to include all the accompanying bibliographic information. For a book,
the copyright page usually has the citation information you need. For a periodical, look for a page near the
beginning of the periodical that includes the date, volume number and issue number. It's also important
to ensure that photocopies or printouts contain the page numbers from the source material.

6. If you question whether and how a source needs to be cited, ask your
professor. Information that is "common knowledge" is not required to be cited, but if you are writing
about a discipline with which you are not familiar, you may not have a good grasp of which information is
"common knowledge" within that field. It's a good idea, before asking your professor, to be sure to first
consult your syllabus and other course materials to ensure the answer isn't there.

7. When in doubt, cite. If you're unsure whether a piece of information needs to be cited and cannot
get an answer, cite it. It's better to over-cite than under-cite.
8. Begin constructing your bibliography early. As soon as you begin gathering source materials,
you can start your bibliography for your paper. If you end up not using some of the listed sources, you can
always delete them when you finalize your paper. Starting early will alert you to any missing bibliographic
information you need to track down. It will also help ensure your bibliography is complete. As part of your
final editing and proofreading, cross-check to be sure that every source you've cited in your paper is listed
in the bibliography, and every source listed in the bibliography is cited in your paper.

9. Don't succumb to the argument that "everyone's doing it." Unfortunately, plagiarism and
other forms of cheating are widespread or college campuses. But it's just not worth the risk even if others
seem to be getting away with it.

10. Consult these sites for more information about avoiding plagiarism:

 Plagiarism.org: Frequently Asked Questions

 Plagiarism Prevention for Students
 Avoiding Plagiarism
6 Ways to Avoid Plagiarism
1. Paraphrase - So you have found information that is perfect for your research
paper. Read it and put it into your own words. Make sure that you do not copy
verbatim more than two words in a row from the text you have found. If you do
use more than two words together, you will have to use quotation marks. We
will get into quoting properly soon.
2. Cite - Citing is one of the effective ways to avoid plagiarism. Follow the
document formatting guidelines (i.e. APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) used by your
educational institution or the institution that issued the research request. This
usually entails the addition of the author(s) and the date of the publication or
similar information. Citing is really that simple. Not citing properly can
constitute plagiarism.
3. Quoting - When quoting a source, use the quote exactly the way it appears.
No one wants to be misquoted. Most institutions of higher learning frown on
“block quotes” or quotes of 40 words or more. A scholar should be able to
effectively paraphrase most material. This process takes time, but the effort
pays off! Quoting must be done correctly to avoid plagiarism allegations.
4. Citing Quotes - Citing a quote can be different than citing paraphrased
material. This practice usually involves the addition of a page number, or a
paragraph number in the case of web content.
5. Citing Your Own Material - If some of the material you are using for your
research paper was used by you in your current class, a previous one, or
anywhere else you must cite yourself. Treat the text the same as you would if
someone else wrote it. It may sound odd, but using material you have used
before is called self-plagiarism, and it is not acceptable.
6. Referencing - One of the most important ways to avoid plagiarism is including
a reference page or page of works cited at the end of your research paper.
Again, this page must meet the document formatting guidelines used by your
educational institution. This information is very specific and includes the
author(s), date of publication, title, and source. Follow the directions for this
page carefully. You will want to get the references right.
 Ways to Avoid Plagiarism:

1) Print everything! Often times a student will find excellent information

on the web site, but he/she will forget to print it. Later, the student might
want to use this information, but he/she may not find it again online. This
can be frustrating, and students might be tempted to use whatever
information they can remember, without citing it. Students can simply
avoid this by printing every online document they find useful.

2) Photocopy everything! Students often times make the mistake of

photocopying only the pages where they find interesting quotes, and they
forget to photocopy the title page of the book/article where the title and
author are listed. Be detailed and photocopy all information you will need
to later cite the source properly.

For most works of literature, the information you will need to cite includes:

 Author—Creator or compiler of the information; for web sites

this may be the Webmaster or the owning organization.
 Title—Title of the document; for web sites this is usually
found at the top of the Web page.
 Publisher--the person or organization responsible for the
material.
 Day, month, year—Date published; for web sites this would
be the date that the Web page was put online; should be the
same as the "last updated" date if available.
 Access date—For web sites only, this is the date you viewed
the Web page or accessed the information.
 Site/path/file—For web sites only, this is the address or URL
(uniform resource locator) of the Web site.

Quoting, Paraphrasing, & Summarizing:

Quotations... Paraphrases... Summaries...

must be identical involves putting a involve putting the
to the original, passage from main idea(s) into your
using a narrow source material own words, including
segment of the into your own only the main point(s).
source. They words. A Once again, it is
must match the paraphrase must necessary to attribute
source document also be attributed summarized ideas to
word for word to the original the original source.
and must be source. Summaries
attributed to the Paraphrased are significantly
original author. material is usually shorterthan a
shorter than the paraphrase because
original passage, summaries take a
taking a broader overview of
somewhat broad the source material.
segment of the
source and
condensing it
slightly.