Many of you arrive at UT not knowing what plagiarism is, and are even unaware that you may have been happily plagiarizing away in your earlier schooling. In high school many of you were taught to write papers using other works like encyclopedias, etc., and were not told that you needed to attribute authorship. You need to be aware that this is not acceptable here (or from now on in life); it is taking someone else's ideas and using them as if they are your own, i.e. it is academic dishonesty and is taken very seriously by the university (including by me). If you bring information or ideas from anywhere other than from your own head you must credit that work. It goes without saying that using another student's paper qualifies as plagiarism as well and should not be done under any circumstances. Here is what you need to know.

A writer's facts, ideas, and phraseology should be regarded as his/her property. Any person who uses a writer's facts, ideas or phraseology without giving due credit is guilty of plagiarism. Information may be put into a paper without a footnote or other form of citation only if it meets all of the following conditions:

1. It is written entirely in the words of the student.

2. It is not paraphrased from any particular source.

3. It therefore belongs to common knowledge. (e.g.: The Tigris river is in Mesopotamia and floods irregularly)

Generally, if a student writes while looking at a source or even while looking at notes taken from a source, a citation should be given.

Whenever any idea is taken from a specific work, even when the student writes the idea entirely in his/her own words, there must be a footnote or other acceptable form of citation giving credit to the author when that author's ideas or words are used. It is not sufficient simply to have a bibliography at the end; even this constitutes plagiarism.

The student is entirely responsible for knowing and following the principles of paraphrasing. The student should never retain a sentence pattern and substitute synonyms for the original words nor retain the original words and alter the sentence pattern. In other words, paraphrasing means both alteration of sentence pattern and changing the words. If what you are writing is based on someone else's words or ideas, that person/work should be cited (with page numbers) even if no words are put in quotation marks.

All direct quotations should be footnoted. Even when a student uses only one unusual or key word from a passage, that word should be placed in quotation marks and cited. A student who uses a source must remember that the very act of looking up a book or article should be considered as a pledge that the material will be used according to the principles stated above.

CITING WEB SITES.

When using a web site, it is important to be as precise as possible. For example, if you are using information from Perseus, you need to indicate from what section of Perseus you are taking information (e.g. the Encyclopedia, a site index). If you are using a link to another site from Perseus, you need to cite that link (and section therein) not Perseus. This rule is important to observe even when not directly quoting from a site (and obviously when you are!). If you feel that you must quote from a web site, you MUST determine who is writing. Your quotation will have no authority if it is anonymous (and it will be plagiarism). Often the site's author will be listed at the top or at the bottom of the site. If you cannot figure out who wrote information, think hard about whether you really need to quote (usually the answer is no).