You’re a college student, and it’s the end of your term, so you’ve got papers due. You’re in a rush, either because you left it to the last minute or because you’re just that busy, and when finishing off that politics paper, you forget to put a direct quotation from one of your sources in quotation marks. You’ve just committed plagiarism.

If you thought plagiarism was only committed by frat boys who buy pre-written essays from online paper mills, or by lazy cheaters who just copy and paste from things they find on Google, you’re wrong. Plagiarism is passing someone else’s work off as your own, whether knowing or unknowing.

While intentional plagiarism—deliberately copying someone else’s work—is a major problem in university classes, unintentional plagiarism causes just as many headaches. Well-meaning students who don’t make time to check their citations, or who don’t understand how to properly cite source material in the first place, can be guilty of passing off others’ works as their own.

Here are some rationales, guidelines, and resources to help you ensure your work passes muster when you’re revising your next essay.

Why Academic Honesty Is Important

Academic honesty—turning in original work with proper citations of resources used—doesn’t just help your professors know that you’re learning about concepts they’re teaching in class. It also helps them understand that you’re ready to function honestly as a professional in your chosen career, or, should you decide on graduate education, as a junior member of the academic community.

In an economy now largely powered by what people know, it’s important for professors to be able to say their students are able and willing to respect intellectual property rights. It’s also important for them to be able to say their students can conduct research at a professional level—and this includes citing sources, not just synthesizing information to make an argument in a paper.

And, if you have any kind of moral code whatsoever, you know that plagiarism is theft—and theft is wrong.

What Constitutes Plagiarism?

If you want to avoid plagiarism, you need to know what it is. Whether or not you did it on purpose, you may have plagiarized a source if, anywhere in your paper you:

    * Fail to put a direct quote in quotation marks, as mentioned above;
    * Use another person’s words or ideas without giving proper credit;
    * Hand in someone else’s work, or a paper that consists mostly of someone else’s work, as your own;
    * Give wrong information about the sources of your quotes;
    * Try to pass off someone else’s ideas as your own;
    * Paraphrase (restate with some changes) writing from a source without citation.

The Basics Of Correct Citation

When you cite someone else’s work, you’re not only identifying ideas and words that aren’t your own within your paper. You’re also giving your readers pointers for following up with that source so they can do their own further research. And, if your source’s ideas are wild or offensive or just bad, prominently citing the original work means people don’t mistake you as the source of the misinformation.

Correctly citing a source of information means that you include the name(s) of the original author, the title of the work, the publishing company, the date the work was published, and the page from which you took your information.

If it’s a website you’re quoting from, you should list the author’s name, title, name of the website, link to the exact page or document you quoted, and the date you visited the page.

You should cite any work from which you:

    * Use a direct quote, whether written, spoken, or in the form of statistics;
    * Paraphrase information;
    * Make a specific reference to in your writing.

For guidance on how to refer to your sources within the body of your work, www.plagiarism.org offers a good overview of acceptable, clear citations.

At the end of your paper, you’ll probably be required to include a bibliography. There are different ideas about how exactly to format your citations when you include them at the end of your paper. Different professors will have different preferences, so ask for pointers before you start writing. Some schools also offer workshops in different citation and writing styles, such as APA format, in order to help students polish their research writing skills—and prevent unintentional plagiarism.

This article is presented by AIU Online, an online university offering career-focused degree programs at the associate, bachelor, and master’s degree levels. Get support as you learn with APA format workshops and other free skills workshops through our Learning Center. Find out more today at http://www.aiuonline.edu.

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