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Cite Your Sources

Understanding Plagiarism

It's important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:

  • demonstrate that you've found suitable sources
  • give credit to researchers and writers
  • avoid plagiarism
  • allow your reader(s) to find the sources you used

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

  • turning in someone else's work as your own
  • copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
  • failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
  • giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
  • changing words, but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
  • copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not