Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism: A Comprehensive Guide (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: So, you have to write a paper, and your instructor has lectured you about not plagiarizing. Do you know how to do it? Welcome to plagiarism. How not to do it. Plagiarism is simply using other people's writing or ideas without giving them credit for it. It is taking the credit yourself. If you copy the entire text from someone else, say, from a website or a book, and put it in your paper as your own writing, that clearly is cheating. You didn't write the words. Someone else did. It is plagiarism of the worst kind, and if you do this, you know you're cheating. But sometimes people plagiarize without intending to. When you take sections of other people's work and include it in your paper, you must let the reader know which words and ideas are yours and which ones are someone else's. One way to do this is simply to quote your source. You put quotation marks around it or block quote longer sections and say where the quote came from. But you also need to cite the source of material you use in your writing, even if you're not quoting it word for word. For instance, let's say you're writing a paper about the invasion of Normandy during World War II. Because you read that there were somewhere between 130,000 and 156,000 troops in the invasion, you write that there were about 150,000 Allied troops in the landing. While you are not quoting the source where you got this information because you are writing it in your own words, you still need to tell the reader where this information came from. You did not stand there counting troops on D-Day. You got the information from a source, so tell your reader. Depending on the style required, such as APA or MLA, you cite your source in the paragraph where you use the information. The same thing applies to ideas. If you're using someone else's idea, like the invasion of Normandy was one of the most important battles in American history, you should let the reader know where you got that idea. If it is your own conclusion after reading about it and studying it, then you do not need to cite a source because the source is you. It is your idea. Sometimes papers are a combination of other sources and your own ideas. That's okay. Just be sure to cite your sources and you won't be plagiarizing. The only time you do not need to cite other sources is when the information is common knowledge, like George Washington was the first U.S. President. You do not have to find a source for this since it is common knowledge. Who are you calling common? For more detailed help in avoiding plagiarism, see the links below. Thank you for watching.