Because the charge of plagiarism is so serious, it is important you learn how to work with the ideas of other people responsibly. Fortunately, being responsible is largely a matter of following certain conventions, the main principle of which is that when you get something from someone else you say so. You say what you took, from whom, and under what circumstances the borrowing took place. Recording your indebtedness to the work of others, whether printed or otherwise, means knowing how to quote accurately, to paraphrase responsibly, and to cite sources correctly. We wish to stress, however, that plagiarism is not to be confused with the sharing of ideas.
All writers get advice from friends and colleagues.
In your composition course, for example, as you work at writing a paper, as you move from an initial draft to intermediate drafts to the draft you hand into your teacher, we strongly encourage you to talk to your friends or classmates about what you are doing and to ask them to read and comment on your work. In most cases, we encourage you also to exchange papers with another student and copy-edit each other's work for errors. An Acknowledgments Page is one way to record your indebtedness to the people who have taken time to help you with your work. This is both a way of thanking them publicly and setting the record straight. We encourage you to design smaller versions of these for your own papers.