Citing Your Sources

Five Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism

1.

First, use your own ideas. It should be your paper and your ideas that should be the focus.

Use the ideas of others sparingly—only to support or reinforce your own argument.

2.

When taking notes or copying information from online databases, the Web, magazines, books, etc., include a complete citation for each item you use as a source of information.

3.

4.

Use quotation marks when directly stating another person's words.

A good strategy is to take 30 minutes and write a short draft of your paper without using any notes. It will help you think through what you want to say and help prevent your being too dependent upon your sources.

5.

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