Plagiarism is the act of using another person's words or ideas as your own.
It can happen deliberately, if you:
Or accidentally, if you:
But no matter how it happens, plagiarism has serious consequences. Review the examples below to be able to recognize it.
Then use the Reference Examples page to help you create your References list, and the In-Text Citation page to help you create those.
Consider the following passage from the chapter "College-Level Writing" by Lynn DuPree from the book Business and Society: Building Skills and Awareness for the Workplace edited by Megan Matthews and Jon Werner:
College students are often instructed by their professors to produce writing that is "college level" but that term can be vague or inconsistent. Not everyone agrees on what constitutes college-level writing, and this lack of agreement can lead to frustration for students (and professors) when the expectations of each group do not align.
Based on the above passage the following sentence is plagiarism because it uses a direct quote from the passage without providing the in-text citation:
While there is a consensus on the requirement for a higher standard of writing in college level classes, "not everyone agrees on what constitutes college-level writing, and their lack of agreement can lead to frustration for students".
The following sentence is also plagiarism because although it is cited, the paraphrase is very similar to the original:
College students are often directed by their professors to turn in writing that is "college level". Not everyone can agree on what college-level writing is. This lack of agreement can cause students to become frustrated (DuPree, 2019).
Consider the following example from the chapter "College-Level Writing" by Lynn DuPree from the book Business and Society: Building Skills and Awareness for the Workplace edited by Megan Matthews and Jon Werner:
College students are often instructed by their professors to produce writing that is "college level" but that term can be vague or inconsistent. Not everyone agrees on what constitutes college-level writing, and this lack of agreement can lead to frustration for students (and professors) when the expectations of each group do not align.
Based on the above passage, the following sentence is not plagiarism because it has all the in-text citation elements required for an exact quote, such as author, date, and page number:
While there is a consensus on the requirement for a higher standard of writing in college level classes, "not everyone agrees on what constitutes college-level writing, and their lack of agreement can lead to frustration for students" (DuPree, 2019, 34).
The following sentence is also not plagiarism because it has all the correct in-text citation elements and there is dissimilarity between the original and the paraphrase:
There is a consensus that higher writing standards should be required of college students, but there is a lack of agreement on the definition of college-level writing. Students can often get confused and frustrated because their definition does not coincide with their professors' (DuPree, 2019).
The author will need to list the item along with any other sources used in the Reference list, as shown below:
