�Paraphrasing and Avoiding Plagiarism �

What is Plagiarism?

Using someone else’s

WORDS or IDEAS

in your work

without saying where they came from ☹

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What happens if I plagiarize?

If you plagiarize:

• Zero on the assignment
• Teacher will call parents
• Conference with administrator

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• Plagiarism in college or jobs in the future can lead to even more serious consequences.

Don’t Cut and Paste…

• If you CUT AND PASTE a sentence from a website, even if you change some of the words, it's plagiarism.

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• Cutting and pasting and changing a few words is a form of plagiarism called "patchwriting"

�Instead of Plagiarizing, you have 2 choices…

“Use A Direct Quotation”…

• Use the author’s exact words in “quotation marks”
• Don’t make ANY changes
• Give the author’s name (Wilson 5)

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That tells your teacher, “I did not write this part. These are someone else’s words.”

…or Paraphrase

• Explain the main ideas of something you read
• Write completely in your own words
• This shows that you understand the source
• Cite the source (Wilson 5)

How do I paraphrase?� First, choose the right source

• Think about readability
• Many students plagiarize because they choose an article to start with that is above their reading level
• Read the first 2 paragraphs. How many words do you not know? If 5 or more, consider switching sources.

Second, READ ACTIVELY & TAKE NOTES

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1. When you read, STOP after each paragraph/chunk of text and ask yourself, “What did I just read?”

2. Annotate the article. Annotating includes:

• Highlighting or underlining important facts
• Summarizing each chunk of text in the margin, in your

own words

• Asking questions you have
• Underlining key terms and writing their definitions
• Pointing out connections to other things you've read

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Then PARAPHRASE

• Put the source away
• When you're ready to add evidence to your paper/essay, remember it should go in a paragraph that already began with your own topic sentence, a mini-claim that supports your thesis. This evidence should support that topic sentence.
• Before the evidence, you should use an attributive tag.
• Add your evidence to that paragraph in your own words (pretend you’re explaining to a teacher out loud what you read)…
• …put a parenthetical citation after it.

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Parenthetical Citations

• Author and page #:

(Martinez 5)

• For websites, sometimes you don’t have a page number:

(Martinez)

• Sometimes you don’t have an author either! Use the page title:

(“Pollution”)

It looks like this:

Nationwide, we throw away too many items into the landfill. Peggy Parks of the National Recycling Center explains that Americans created 245 million tons of trash in 2006 (Parks 7). Our trash includes things like paper and food scraps that could be recycled or composted instead.

*My paraphrased evidence is the red part. It supports my orange topic sentence, and it's introduced by the blue attributive tag.

Make sure:

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All the sources in your Works Cited page have a parenthetical citation in your paper

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...and all your parentheticals are in your Works Cited!

What if I need to use a quotation from the book or website?

• If you do need to use a sentence from a book or website…
• Put “quotation marks…” around it right away!
• And put a citation after it like this:

“In 2006, about 245 million tons of trash were produced in the United States” (Parks 7).

Quoted evidence looks like this:

Americans throw away too much garbage each year. According to Peggy Parks of the National Recycling Center, “In 2006, about 245 million tons of trash were produced in the United States” (Parks 7). If we keep producing so many tons of trash each year, we may run out of space in landfills, the places where we dump trash.

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*My quoted evidence is the teal-colored part. It supports my orange topic sentence, and it's introduced by the blue attributive tag.

Let’s practice on a paragraph about landfills…

Is this plagiarized or paraphrased?

• Original:

“Landfills are the number one method of garbage disposal. Landfill space will become scarcer, however, if the amount of garbage continues to increase. This could cause problems, because landfills are not popular. They are unpleasant to look at. They produce methane gas that smells bad. They can also contribute to pollution” (Parks 20).

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• Is this paraphrased or plagiarized?

Landfills are the main method of trash disposal. Landfill space will become scarcer if the amount of garbage continues to increase. Landfills cause problems because they are unpleasant to look at, smell bad, and pollute.

Plagiarized!

Is this plagiarized or paraphrased?

• Original:

“Landfills are the number one method of garbage disposal. Landfill space will become scarcer, however, if the amount of garbage continues to increase. This could cause problems, because landfills are not popular. They are unpleasant to look at. They produce methane gas that smells bad. They can also contribute to pollution” (Parks 20).

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• Is this paraphrased or plagiarized?

Most of our garbage goes into landfills, but if we keep creating the same amount of trash, there will not be enough space. Most people do not want new landfills in their towns because of the ugly appearance, bad odor, and harmful pollution that landfills create (Parks 20).

Paraphrased! ☺