Consequently, you need to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. The most blatant form of plagiarism involves submitting a commercially produced paper or one written by another student as your own work. Most plagiarism is, however, not so obvious. Even a very short passage can be plagiarized.
Students often try to avoid the problem by paraphrasing or summarizing the original text.
Unfortunately these strategies, improperly done, may also constitute plagiarism. One strategy, simply changing a few words in the original, can constitute plagiarism. Otherwise, you are plagiarizing because you have used some of the author's words and his sentence structure without acknowledging that they are not your own. It is plagiarizing because you have used some of the author's words and his sentence structure without giving credit. In addition, in the previous example you have also used the author's idea.