Plagiarism

You must be careful to avoid plagiarism in your writing.  Most people know that copying something verbatim is plagiarism, but “copying” is a very narrow definition of plagiarism.  Although plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional, either is a violation of the Academic Honesty Code.  Listed below are a number of precautions you must take if any of your information comes from another source.

You are guilty of plagiarism if:

• you copy anything, even just a couple of words, from a source without citing that source.

• you summarize or reword (paraphrase) information from a source with citing that source.

• you use any facts, statistics, or other illustrative material that is not common knowledge without citing that source

• you get an opinion, interpretation, or idea from a source without citing that source

Furthermore, having anyone proofread your paper without your teacher’s knowledge and permission may be considered plagiarism.

While you may not have considered some of the above to be plagiarism in the past, you now have the ability to scrupulously avoid plagiarism.  A simple rule to follow is this: If you use any source at all, cite your information clearly in MLA format.

If in doubt, credit.

If you are guilty of plagiarism, you will receive a zero for that paper and be subject to the consequences of the district discipline policy.