To avoid plagiarism, adhere to these guidelines:
- Don't rely too much on one source, or you may easily slip into using that person's thoughts as your own.
- Keep accurate records while doing research and taking notes or you may lose track of where an idea came from. If you do not know where you got an idea or piece of information, do not use it in your paper until you find out. You will need to keep track of authors, titles, page numbers, and publication information to cite each source correctly.
- When you take notes, be sure to put quotation marks around words, phrases, or sentences taken verbatim from a source. If you use any of those words, phrases or sentences when summarizing or paraphrasing the source, make sure to put them in quotation marks. Keep in mind that changing a word here and there while keeping a source's sentence structure or phrasing constitutes plagiarism, even if you credit the source for the ideas.
- Cite the source of all ideas, opinions, facts, and statistics that are not common knowledge.
- Choose an appropriate documentation style and use it consistently and properly.