More Writing Center handouts Tips on printing out this handout . This handout explains what plagiarism is and outlines steps students can follow to avoid plagiarizing. You may have heard so many different definitions of plagiarism that you feel confused about exactly what it is. Despite all this variation, you can avoid the serious charge of committing plagiarism by adopting a conservative definition of the term and following the guidelines below. In order to understand plagiarism, it helps first to understand the process of sharing and creating ideas in the university.
All knowledge is built from previous knowledge.
As we read, study, peform experiments, and gather perspectives, we are using other people's ideas. Building on other people's ideas, we create our own. When you put your ideas on paper, your instructors want to distinguish between the building block ideas borrowed from other people and your own newly reasoned perspectives or conclusions. You make these distinctions in a written paper by citing the sources for your building block ideas. Giving clear credit for ideas matters in the professional community as well as in school.