Citing & Plagiarism: Summary

Definition
Plagiarism can be defined as using another person’s work or ideas without giving that person appropriate credit.

To put it another way... PLAGIARISM = STEALING

Seneca College Policy
Seneca College has its own policy on plagiarism.

If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to review the "Academic Honesty " before you begin any assignments.

If you are caught plagiarizing, you can face very serious consequences.

Plagiarism can occur in many ways. Here are a few examples:

You cannot:

• Buy a paper from a papermill, website or other source.
• Submit someone else's assignment as your own.
• Submit your own paper in more than one course.
• Copy and paste information from someone else's work without giving credit to the author.
• Change a few words in a sentence or paragraph and call it your own work without giving credit to the author.

Copying & Pasting

What might happen:
Sometimes, when you are searching on the computer, you find a piece of information that you want to use for your assignment. You copy and paste that information right into your paper, but you don't indicate who wrote it or where you got it from.

This is considered plagiarism!
Copying and pasting information without giving the author credit
is like stealing someone else's ideas!

Changing a few words

What might happen:
Sometimes, you will find a few sentences or a paragraph that you want to use in your assignment. So, you change a few words, but don't indicate who wrote it or where you got it from.

This is considered plagiarism!
Even though you have changed a few words, the main idea still belongs to someone else. So if you don't give credit to the original author, this is like stealing someone else's idea.

Summarizing

What might happen:
Sometimes, you will find a large piece of information that you want to use in your assignment. So, you summarize the information in one or two sentences, but don't indicate where you got the original idea from.

This is considered plagiarism!
Even though you have summarized a large piece of information into one or two sentences, the main idea still belongs to someone else. So if you don't give credit to the original author, this is like stealing someone else's idea.

Avoiding Plagiarism
Now that you have learned about different forms of plagiarism, let's discuss how you can avoid it.

Here are the best ways to avoid plagiarism:

• write your assignment in your own words, using your own ideas.
• use quotation marks when you copy something exactly from another source.
• always give the original author credit for using his/her words or ideas -- this is referred to as "citing."

Citing
In many of your assignments, you will be instructed to cite your sources or prepare a bibliography using a certain citation style (sometimes called a style guide). You do this by preparing a Works Cited list (some people refer to this as a Bibliography.)

Citing: Citing your sources is the process of giving credit when you use someone else's words or ideas.

Citation style: This is a series of rules. It outlines how to give credit to the sources you've used in your assignment.

Citation Styles
There are many citation styles such as:

• MLA
• APA
• Chicago
• Harvard Style

Each style has its own set of rules. But they all require you include two things in your assignment -- a Works Cited list, and In-text Citations.

The professor in your FAC course will instruct you to use the MLA style of citing.

Works Cited List
The Works Cited list is placed at the end of your assignment. It includes a list of all the sources you used when preparing your assignment.

The MLA Style Guide gives you all the rules for creating a Works Cited list.

In-Text Citations
In-text citations are located within the main part of your assignment. Each of these refers to a specific source included in your Works Cited list.

Library Resources
The library has a number of useful MLA resources that will help you create your Works Cited list and In-text citations.