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Research essays

Avoiding plagiarism

Plagiarism is

  • presenting someone else’s ideas or work as your own

Keeping track of your sources will

  • prevent you from unintentionally presenting someone ideas or work as your own

For each source, you must keep track of

  • very specific citation information

This information must be

  • formatted into a citation entry using an appropriate citation style.

Note taking

The following note taking habits will prevent you from accidentally plagiarizing another person's work:

Photocopy key sections of articles. In the margins write

  • questions
  • comments
  • statements about your understanding, agreement or disagreement

Highlight passages that may be useful to quote or paraphrase

  • as evidence to support your argument and analysis of the topic

When you quote or paraphrase from a source, you are responsible for

  • understanding the information in the source
  • accurately representing the quote or paraphrase in the context of the source

Make notes about the important points and key quotations to help you develop

  • your own perspective and ideas about your topic
  • possible arguments to support your perspective

Keep your notes

  • together with each source
  • until your instructor returns your marked research essay

For more information on note taking and avoiding plagiarism, see