Information Literacy Learning Guides

Key Concepts                             Plagiarism

Plagiarism can take many forms:

• Copying any direct quotation from your source material without providing quotation marks or
  crediting your source
• Paraphrasing of a borrowed idea without introducing and documenting the source of the idea
• Copying another paper

Tips to help you avoild plagiarism

• Identify the source of everything that is not your own, original thought or common knowledge.
• When using someone else's exact words use quotation marks (or indent long passages) and identify the source.

Material is considered common knowledge is:

• You can find the information undocumented in at least five sources
• You think the information is general known by your readers
• You think a person could easily find the information with general reference sources

  Click here to Practice what you have learned about URLS.