How to avoid plagiarism?
How to avoid plagiarism
Plagiarism can sometimes be the result of poor note taking, or paraphrasing without properly citing the reference. You can avoid plagiarism by:
- citing your references
- referencing correctly
- recording direct quotes and paraphrases correctly when note taking.
Quotes
When you use the exact words, ideas or images of another person, you are quoting the author. If you do not use quotation marks around the original author's direct words and cite the reference, you are plagiarising.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is when you take someone else's concepts and put them into your own words without changing the original meaning. Even though you are not using the same words you still need to state where the concepts came from.
Note taking
Poor note taking can lead to plagiarism. You should always take care to:
- record all reference information correctly
- use quotation marks exactly as in the original
- paraphrase correctly
- clearly distinguish your own ideas from the ideas of other authors and researchers.
The video above is a helpful guide to paraphrasing so that you avoid plagiarism. This is not the same thing as replacing words here and there; it actually involves taking the original sentences away once you've substituted vocabulary and syntax (sentence structure). Using the note-taking template will help with this because after you've added your paraphrased notes, you don't look at the original after that, and so you can move onto the next step of creating your own sentences and forming paragraphs.
