Plagiarism is not only dishonest, it is also a form of theft and, in some institutions, can result in expulsion. At the college level, if you are guilty of plagiarizing, whether intentional or accidental, your professor may either give the plagiarized assignment an F or allow you to rewrite it according to specifications. Additionally, your name may be reported to the Division Chair. A second offense will result in more severe penalties. Depending on the severity, even first offenses may result in serious consequences. Disciplinary actions may vary between institutions.

To avoid plagiarism, you should first understand what needs to be documented. Your own ideas, interpretations, observations, and expressions do not need to be documented. Information that most people know, or that can be found in at least three sources (such as when Mozart lived, or who won the first Super Bowl) is called "common knowledge," and does not need to be documented, even if you have to look up the information. Any other information you present in an essay, however, needs documentation. This includes another person's writing or ideas, statistics, little-known facts, and information based on someone's primary research. You may present information such as this by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.

To quote directly, you enclose in quotation marks the exact words of the original, then in parentheses, provide information to refer your readers to an explanation of the source, located an the Works Cited page. For longer quotations (more than four typed lines), you should indent ten spaces and include parenthetical documentation at the end of the quotation. You do not need to put quotation marks around the indented material since the indentation tells readers you are presenting a direct quote. Sometimes, the information in the parentheses consists of the author's last name and the page number(s) on which the words appears. If you give the author's name as a lead-in phrase (According to Smith ... ) then you need only include the page numbers in the parenthesis. With quotations, a lead-in phrase is not necessary, since the quotation marks tell the reader where the quotation begins. However, you should strive to smoothly incorporate the quoted material into your own writing rather than simply "dumping" it into your essay.

When you paraphrase, you set forth an author's meaning in your own words. You CANNOT use words, phrases, or clauses that resemble those of the author. In other words, paraphrasing involves more than simply "plugging in" synonyms or rearranging phrases and clauses; it involves changing the original substantially, so that the author's ideas are conveyed in your own voice. With a paraphrase, a lead-in phrase is necessary so that readers will know when the paraphrase begins. After the paraphrase, you should include information in parentheses that refers the readers to an explanation of the source located on the Works Cited page.

To summarize, you must extract the author's main ideas and present those ideas in your own words. A summary condenses longer passages to give readers the author's basic message. As with a paraphrase, a summary requires that you substantially change the words, phrases, and clauses to convey the author's ideas in your own words. You must also use a lead-in phrase to introduce a summary, and provide parenthetical documentation that will lead the readers to an explanation of the source of the Works Cited page.