How to Recognize and Avoid Plagiarism

Richard L. Saunders, Paul Meek Library

Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Working with Drafts

Students sometimes get into trouble when they throw together a draft of a paper that may draw too heavily on a source and lack proper citations to save time while writing, then ask for a professor's review suggestions. If a professor later forgets that the submission was intended for comment only, they may mis-remember the paper as a completed submission and therefore grounds for referral to Student Discipline.

To keep a draft from involving you in a disciplinary action, get in the habit of taking three simple steps:

• Properly paraphrase, quote, and cite sources fully at every stage of your writing, beginning with your notes so that you always have a full citation on hand and never have to return for bibliographic details
• Identify any document you give someone to review print or electronic with the current date, the date the work is due for class, and a return-to-me date
• Clearly mark at least the first page of any printed or electronic copy as a Draft or For comment only so there is no question where it stands in your writing process (header or footer functions in word processing software is great for this)