Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as if it were your own, whether you mean to or not. "Someone else’s work" means anything that is not your own idea, even if it is presented in your own style.

It includes material from books, journals or any other printed source, the work of other students or staff, information from the Internet, software programs and other electronic material, designs and ideas. It also includes the organization or structuring of any such material.

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use

• another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
• any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge (see below);
• quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words;
• paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

Statement from Student Handbook

Section III. Proscribed Conduct

Class A Violations

A) A person who is found guilty of any of the following acts committed while a student on a University campus or on property controlled by a University or University affiliates or in connection with off-campus University activities shall be subjected to the maximum penalty of expulsion or any other penalty authorized herein.

1. Academic misconduct including all forms of cheating and plagiarism. Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to providing or receiving assistance in a manner not authorized by the instructor in the creation of work to be submitted for academic evaluation including papers, projects and examinations; and presenting, as one's own, the idea or works of another person or persons for academic evaluation without acknowledgment.

Plagiarism offenses result in disciplinary proceedings!

For more information, consult the WCSU Student Handbook.

Terms to Know

Common Knowledge

Information that is "common knowledge" are facts that can be found in numerous places and are likely to be known by a lot of people.

Example: John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States in 1960.

This is generally known information, so you don't need to cite this fact, however, you must document facts that are not generally known and ideas that interpret facts.

Example: According the American Family Leave Coalition’s new book, Family Issues and Congress, President Bush's relationship with Congress has hindered family leave legislation (6).

The idea that "Bush's relationship with Congress has hindered family leave legislation" is not a fact but an interpretation. For interpretations of facts, you need to cite your source.

Quotation

Quotations use someone's words. When you quote, place the passage you are using in quotation marks, and document the source according to a standard documentation style.

The following example uses the Modern Language Association's style:

Example: According to Peter S. Pritchard in USA Today, "Public schools need reform but they're irreplaceable in teaching all the nation's young"; (14).

Paraphrase

When you paraphrase, you are using someone's ideas, but putting them in your own words. This is probably the skill you will use most when incorporating sources into your writing. Although you use your own words to paraphrase, you must still acknowledge the source of the information.

For examples of acceptable and unacceptable examples of paraphrasing, see our page on Examples.