Avoiding plagiarism

1. Avoiding Plagiarism
Presented by the Center for Writing and
Languages
In partnership with the Integrated Learning
Resource Center

2. What is plagiarism?
• Plagiarism (papers, projects or any assignment prepared outside of class)
includes, but is not limited
to . . .
• Omitting quotation marks or other conventional markings around material
quoted from any printed source
• Paraphrasing a specific passage from a specific source without properly
referencing the source
• Replicating another student's work, in whole or in part and submitting it
as original
(Source: https://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=24212)

3. Documentation Styles
• MLA
-Parenthetical citations
-Used in English and sometimes COMS
• APA
-Parenthetical citations, date emphasized
-Used in psychology and other human sciences

4. More Documentation Styles
• Turabian
-Footnotes
-Used in history, philosophy, and religion
• AMA
-Sources are numbered and keyed to endnotes
-Used in medical sciences

5. Library Helps for Citing
• Placeholder—Rory will provide content.

6. Using sources
• Quoting: Using author’s exact words
• Paraphrasing: Restating author’s ideas in your own
words and your own sentence structure
• Summarizing: Briefly stating author’s main point in
your own words and sentence structure. A summary
is shorter than the original text.
• All three must be followed by citations.

7. When to use each method
• Quote when the individual words are just as
important as the message (e.g., poetry).
• Paraphrase when the message is more important
than the word choice. This is often the case!
• Summarize when you are dealing with a large
amount of relevant source material (e.g., you’re
writing a book review).

8. How not to paraphrase
• Do not try to go directly from the page to the
computer screen, word by word.
• This makes it too easy to copy the author’s sentence
structure.
• This method can also lead to awkward word choice if
you try to avoid plagiarism by looking up a synonym
for each word.

9. How to paraphrase
• Start with a manageable amount of source material.
• Read it several times to make sure you understand it.
• Close the book or other source and put it aside.
• Write the main ideas of the passage you’ve just read
in your own “voice”: the way you would say it.
• Go back to the original source and check your
paraphrase for accuracy.

10. Note-taking
• I think Rory is covering this as well.

11. SafeAssign
• Some instructors will require you to upload your
papers to SafeAssign.
• This is a Blackboard-based program that finds parts
of a paper that match other student papers,
websites, and some published sources.
• It is not a fool-proof program, but it is useful for
alerting instructors to possible plagiarism.

12. Your response to SafeAssign
• Don’t plagiarize!
• Don’t pay attention to the percentage. A paper with
a large number of direct quotes may have a high
percentage. That doesn’t mean it’s plagiarized.
• Don’t worry—your instructors won’t make decisions
based on the percentage alone; they will check your
papers and use their own judgment.

13. Questions?
• Ask us now, or contact
– the Undergraduate Writing Center
undergraduatewriting@liberty.edu, 434-592-3174
– the Graduate Writing Center
graduatewriting@liberty.edu, 434-592-4727
– Rory Patterson, research librarian
rlpatterson2@liberty.edu, 434-582-2230