Copyright Information: Attribution & Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism and Why is it Important?

In college courses, we are constantly exposed to other people’s ideas: we read them in texts, hear them in lecture, discuss them in class, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is extremely important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.

How Can You Avoid Plagiarism?

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use

• Another person’s idea, opinion, or theory
• Any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge
• Quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words
• Paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words
• When in doubt, CITE!
• To read more about plagiarism, look in the APA manual on pages 15-16 and 170.

To avoid plagiarism at Oak Point, you must use APA citation and know exactly how to cite information. Improper formatting in your paper will cause you to lose points. There are 2 copies of the APA 6^th Edition in the Oak Point library to use.

Direct Quotes: You must be careful not only to document material taken from other sources but to indicate each and every use you make of another author's wording. For direct quotations, be sure not to omit any words or punctuation. If part of the quotation is irrelevant to your purpose and its omission does not change the meaning of the quotation, you may replace that segment with an ellipsis. Place brackets around any word or comment you add within the quotation.

Paraphrasing and Summarizing: At times, you will be paraphrasing or summarizing an author's idea. Any paraphrases or summaries that you do make should be completely in your own words and sentence structure. The surest means for achieving this end is not to look at the original while writing. Inserting synonyms for an author's words into his or her sentence structure is just as much plagiarism as unidentified word-for-word quotations. Integrating paraphrases and summaries fully into your own style has the virtue of demonstrating your clear comprehension of the subject matter; it also makes for a more unified and readable essay.

For more APA citation and information, visit this guide here!

APA is the citation format that Oak Point requires students to learn and understand for all research assignments. 

The Library has a station with physical handouts of paper format examples, citation FAQs, and more. Download and view all APA materials on the Writing Guide! Need writing help? Utilize TutorMe! This is located in Brightspace. It is free and unlimited for all students needing writing assistance.