Plagiarism

-- includes ideas, words, data, computer programming, or any other creative endeavour.

A more common example would be copying another author's phrases, sentences, ideas, or arguements without citing the source.

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The Good News About Citing Sources

Although we have been speaking aobut avoiding plagiarism to avoid negative consequences, there are also positive benefits to avoiding plagiarism for students who want to achieve good grades. Referencing actually makes your work appear more academic and positions it within the ongoing scholarly conversation or debate in your discipline; it provides an authority to back up your arugements. Citations create the impression that your own arguement is founded logically and systematically on previous work (and, hence, is credible). As a result, in many subjects, the more you reference the more scholarly your paper will be. And referencing also benefits others who are interested in pursuing the subject beyond your paper.

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5. to remember which ideas are your own and which belong to someone else?

This is difficult, particularly after you have been working intensively on a topic for some time. Try to paraphrase as you take your notes (except where you copy the exact words inside quotation marks") always noting the page numbers for that information.

7. Never cut and paste text to create a paper from several quoted sources, supplying only your own introduction and conclusion. This is a patchwork quilt not an essay.