About Plagiarism

Plagiarism is academic theft. If you take words, phrases, ideas, or artistic productions of someone else's and present them as your own, you are guilty of plagiarism. If you quote someone else's words or paraphrase someone else's ideas, and do not cite the source, you are guilty of plagiarism. If you give someone else's exact words, but do not quote them--even if you cite the source--you are guilty of plagiarism.

You are morally and legally obligated to acknowledge your indebtedness to someone else's facts, ideas, arrangements, or phrases. You do not need to feel embarrassed at drawing upon what has been thought and written by others about a particular subject; in doing research you should read widely and feel free to draw from that reading, as long as what you borrow from others is properly acknowledged. Of course, you should also say something new about the materials used and demonstrate some originality of thought. Simply piecing together previously published materials is likely to be a waste of time for you and for the reader since you have not bothered to consider the value and significance of the raw material and to place it in the context of your own ideas. The danger of plagiarism is not only the pain and punishment that result from being discovered, but the self-delusion of having accomplished something.

Acceptable Techniques for using Borrowed Materials

Direct quotation, properly documented:

Example: As Arthur Schlesinger reports in A Thousand Days,

in November, 1963, President Kennedy told an audience at Amherst College: . . . art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. . . . In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation (923).

Schlesinger comments, "peaceful coexistence had to mean the free circulation of ideas among all countries or it would mean very little" (923).

Note that the introductory sentence credits the work from which this quotation was taken by giving the author and the title, as well as the speaker and the time and the place of the address. The documentation directs the reader to the exact page of the published source. Words within quotation marks (and, as above, quotations of more than four lines, indented) are quoted verbatim except where ellipsis marks ( . . . ) indicate an omission, or square brackets [ ] indicate your own addition or comments. Do not otherwise change quoted statements. You should incorporate quoted material smoothly into your normal sentence structure.

Paraphrase attributed to the original source:

Example: Arthur Schlesinger, in A Thousand Days, reports that President Kennedy told an Amherst audience that in a democracy the artist must be faithful to his own perception of the truth regardless of the relation of that truth to current ideology (923).

The paraphrase (source material restated in your own words), in its generality, loses much of the concrete effect of the original (e.g., "let the chips fall where they may") but it is faithful to the intent of the original. A paraphrase, like a quotation, must be documented.

Part quotation and part paraphrase worked into your own text:

Example: Arthur Schlesinger, in A Thousand Days , reports that President Kennedy told an Amherst audience that art is "a form of truth," that in a democracy art can never be an ideological "weapon," and that in a democracy the artist "best serves his nation" by being faithful to his own perception of the truth and letting the "chips fall where they may" (923).

This technique is flexible and allows you to condense and interpret source material at the same time that you use direct quotation to underscore important points and present striking phrases.

Academic Theft (Totally unacceptable)

Quotation given as writer's own words:

Example: We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. I believe that in a free society art is not a weapon. It does not belong to polemics and ideology. I firmly believe that the best thing a writer or other artist can do is to remain true to himself or herself.

The writer has obviously taken phrases from the source and has made no acknowledgement of the debt. This is an example of plagiarism.

Exact words from a source given as acknowledged paraphrase:

Example: President Kennedy told an Amherst audience that art is a form of truth, and that in a free society the artist best serves his nation by being true to himself and letting the chips fall where they may (Schlesinger 923).

The writer has acknowledged a debt to Schlesinger's book, but by not putting quotation marks around the words that are taken exactly from the source, the writer says to the reader that the words are a paraphrase--that is, that they are the writer's own words. Even though this omission of quotation marks may be unintentional, possibly as a result of sloppy notetaking, it is also an example of plagiarism.

You need to be accurate and exact in your use of other people's material, giving proper credit when it is due.