How do I avoid plagiarism?
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you:
- use another person's idea, opinion, or thought.
- use any information that isn't common knowledge.
- quote or paraphrase another person's actual spoken or written words.
Use these tips and techniques to check your work and avoid unintentional plagiarism.
Searching Google and Google Scholar can serve as a simple, free, initial step in plagiarism detection. To run a quick check, paste a sample of the passage that you are working with into Google’s search box. If there is a match with website content, a link to the source will be provided.
To detect plagiarism from scholarly works, enter the samples of passages that you'd like to check into Google Scholar, which links to many scholarly databases. (adapted from BU Center for Teaching and Learning)
Learn More
Tutorial: Citations and Plagiarism
Tutorial: How Do I Give Credit to the Ideas of Others?
The University of Arizona Writing Skills Improvement Program
The Writing Skills Improvement Program (WSIP) was established over 30 years ago in order to help students at the University of Arizona improve their writing skills and achieve academic success. Workshops, writing groups, tutoring and editing services are available through this program.
