MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The Modern Language Association of America, 1988. The MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as the use of another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without giving proper credit to the source. In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else. This can include paraphrasing, copying someone else's writing word for word, or using ideas that aren't your own without proper citation.
Plagiarism is often unintentional, and bad research habits can form early in elementary school.
Unfortunately, these bad habits can continue throughout high school and college and may result in severe consequences, from failure in a course to expulsion. American Psychological Association. Summarizing a passage or rearranging the order of a sentence and changing some of the words is paraphrasing. Each time a source is paraphrased, a credit for the source needs to be included in the text. The key element of this principle is that an author does not present the work of another as if it were his or her own work.