What is Plagiarism?
This resource is based on information from the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) web site, as cited
below. For more detailed information about plagiarism and avoiding plagiarism, click here.
Blatant Instances of Plagiarism






Purchasing, stealing, or borrowing material written or created by someone else and
presenting it as your own.
Copying and pasting a webpage or any other online media and stating it is your own.
Taking information from online or print resources and presenting it as your own.
Failing to use quotation marks around exact text taken from a source or proper citations.
Providing a paper, or any portion of a paper, written by a friend.
Having someone rewrite or retype a paper on your behalf.
Possible (Technical) Instances of Plagiarism


Writing a phrase or two that closely resembles or is identical to someone else’s writing.
Basing a paper on someone else’s ideas without clearly citing their work.
Avoid Plagiarism by Properly Citing:






Someone else’s ideas in any printed, online, audio, or visual resource such as magazines,
books, webpages, recordings, movies, etc.
Information obtained from interviews or conversations with others through any means such
as in-person interviews, telephone conversations, texting and other social media, emails,
letters, etc.
Exact words or sentences used from a particular source.
Paraphrased passages.
When using someone else’s diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, printed music, and
other visual materials.
Online media such as pictures/images, videos, and audio.
Citations are NOT necessary and you are NOT plagiarizing when you:



Write about your own thoughts or experiences, observations, and conclusions about a
particular topic.
Conduct and write up results of your own lab experiments.
Use your own art or media such as photographs, videos, music, etc.



Use ideas that are considered “common knowledge”:
o General common knowledge is factual information considered to be in the public
domain, such as birth and death dates of well-known figures, and generally accepted
dates of military, political, literary, and other historical events. In general, factual
information contained in multiple standard reference works can usually be
considered to be in the public domain.
o Field-specific common knowledge is "common" only within a particular field or
specialty. It may include facts, theories, or methods that are familiar to readers
within that discipline. For instance, you may not need to cite a reference to Piaget's
developmental stages in a paper for an education class or give a source for your
description of a commonly used method in a biology report—but you must be sure
that this information is so widely known within that field that it will be shared by
your readers.
Use ideas that are generally accepted as facts such as the sun rising and setting every day;
there are 7 days in a week; July has 31 days, etc.)
****If in doubt, be cautious and cite the source. And in the case of both general and fieldspecific common knowledge, if you use the exact words of the reference source, you must
use quotation marks and credit the source.
"How to Avoid Plagiarism." Avoiding Plagiarism: Quoting and Paraphrasing. University of
Wisconsin-Madison The Writing Center, 29 Aug. 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Stolley, Karl, and Brizee, Allen. Purdue Online Writing Lab: Is it Plagiarism Yet?
Purdue University, last edited 13, Feb. 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
"What Constitutes Plagiarism?" (n.d.): n. pag. 29 Mar. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
November 17, 2015