How do I avoid plagiarizing?

Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas without giving proper credit or without giving any credit to the writer of the original source. In other words, plagiarism is the presentation of source material as your own words or ideas. Plagiarism is theft.

To avoid plagiarism, use the following guidelines:

• Acknowledge every use you make of someone else's material (ideas, examples, judgments, original insights, studies, research, facts, information from illustrations, tables, graphs, and charts).
• If you directly quote someone else's material, make sure the quotation is exact.
• If you are paraphrasing or summarizing someone else's material, use your own words and sentence structure, but do not distort the meaning of the original. Understanding source material is a prerequisite to paraphrasing or summarizing. You must first interact with the source through repeated reading, analysis, and synthesis of the material.
• Include complete and accurate source citations.
• Include a complete and accurate list of works cited with all the sources you have used in your paper.