As an aid to your understanding and as a matter of Departmental policy, the History department is supplying you with the following additional statement. Your professor may wish to incorporate a further statement. Adherence to ethical standards is an important part of education and is the highest responsibility of student and teacher alike . There is nothing more valuable than one's personal integrity. There are few things more painful in life than the loss of this integrity, be it through a deliberate act or through careless inattention to ethics.
Most students have no intention of cheating.
That is why it is all the more important that students be fully aware of the ethical standards that govern the world of ideas. The basic rule to keep in mind is that words and ideas are intellectual property, to which property rights apply. As the Harbrace College Handbook suggests , plagiarism is literary theft. Passing off the ideas or the words of someone else as one's own is a form of lying or stealing. One must be as scrupulous and careful not to shoplift ideas as one would be about not shoplifting physical property.