Citation Style: MLA: Avoiding Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism?

Research and writing are a large component of your program. In your writing, it is important to recognize other authors' ideas and research and document them, in addition to adding your own. It is considered plagiarism if you do not give credit to others after using their ideas.

To learn more about plagiarism and how to avoid it in your papers, take a look at the Purdue OWL Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism.

Keuka College's official statement on Academic Integrity states the following:

The faculty of Keuka College abide by the definitions of plagiarism offered by James D. Lester in Writing Research Papers, 4th ed., pages 95-96 (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company). The following is reprinted with permission of Scott, Foresman and Company:

Fundamentally, plagiarism is the offering of words or ideas of another person as one’s own. While the most blatant violation is the use of other students’ work, the most common is the unintentional misuse of your reference sources...

An obvious form of plagiarism is copying direct quotations from your source material without crediting the source. A more subtle form, but equally improper, is the paraphrasing of material or use of an original idea that is not properly introduced and documented...

Student’s use of source materials requires them to conform to a few rules of conduct:

• Acknowledge borrowed materials within the text by introducing the quotation or paraphrase with the name of the authority from whom it was taken. This practice serves to indicate where the borrowed materials began.
• Enclose within quotation marks all quoted materials.
• Make certain that paraphrased material is rewritten in the student’s own style and language. The simple rearrangement of sentence patterns is unacceptable.
• Provide specific documentation for each borrowed item.
• Provide a citation on the references or works cited page for every book or journal that is referred to in the paper.