Note: The Understanding Plagiarism tab you are vewing now will be phased out on August 31, 2022. Instead, use our Avoiding Plagiarism Guide at https://libguides.wmich.edu/plagiarism.

Five Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism

1. Use your own ideas! It's your paper! 
2. Use the ideas of others sparingly--only to support or reinforce your own argument
3. When taking notes, include complete citation information for each item you use
4. Use quotation marks when directly stating another person's words
5. Write for 30 minutes without using any notes
   • Helps you think through what you want to say
   • Helps prevent your being too dependent upon your sources

How to Write Well and Avoid Plagiarism

• How WMU defines plagiarism and its consequences 2m20s
• Why care about plagiarism? Who is harmed when we plagiarize?  3m02s
• Graduate Students and Source Text Use  6m04s
• Why Do Students Copy Sources?  2m24s 
• What Counts as Plagiarism?   How much do you need to change before it is not plagiarism? 3m46s
• Non-native English Speakers and Unique Issues with Source Text Use 2m30s
• Patchwriting Watch how one scholarly article is copied in other scholarly articles over several years. 2m27s 
• Writing Well (and Avoiding Plagiarism)  10m22s
• When Is It OK to Copy? Yes! There are times when it is OK to copy short passages in academic writing.  0m51s

More Videos from Other Libraries

• Plagiarism 
• You quote it, you note it 
• Find the Plagiarism Goblins