How to Recognize and Avoid Plagiarism

Richard L. Saunders, Paul Meek Library

Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Habitual PQPCM

Making the effort to avoid plagiarism has great payoffs. It helps you learn more effectively, strengthens your writing skills, and ultimately provides a useful skill for any job involving ideas or writing.

Avoiding plagiarism involves adopting a few good writing habits.

1. Learn to paraphrase effectively. Present someone else's ideas by restating and summarizing a text in your own words, being careful to do more than just rearrange or replace a few words.
2. Practice careful quotation, putting quotes around everything that comes directly from a text. Be especially careful to use quotes when taking notes from a source.
3. Get permission for any extensive use of quoted text and for individual graphic objects.
4. Create full, correct citations for sources you use, appropriate to the style for your discipline.
5. Date and clearly mark all drafts submitted for review and comment.