Five Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism
- Use your own ideas. It is your project and therefore your ideas should be the focus.
- Use the ideas of others sparingly and only to support or reinforce your own argument.
- When taking notes, include complete citation information for each item you use.
- Use quotation marks when directly stating another person's words.
- A good strategy is to take 30 minutes and write a short draft of your paper without using any notes. It will help you think through what you want to say and help to prevent you from becoming to dependent on your sources.