Tuesday, October 11, 2011

EOL Chapter 7: Avoiding Plagiarism and Documenting Sources

Plagiarism involves stealing the ideas or inventions from the original author without citing or referencing the source, whether intentional or unintentional, and can result in serious offense for the violater.  Before accidentally committing plagiarism, one must consider his sources as if they were the people themselves whoms ideas they belong to.  Another critical element to avoiding this crime involves effective note taking during the research process.  If one comes across an interesting idea or quote during the process, always record the data in a research log with some sort of notation to refer back on how the source might be incorporated into the argument in the final paper.

Plagiarism can result from many diferent reasons such as an abundance of information and sources, fatigue, or overall unorganization of notes and carelessness.  No matter what the reason may be, the consequences are very harsh; and in many institutions, such an act, at the very least, would result in failing the course to ultimately more serious actions such as expulsion from the university.

A person must always remember to never take the art of plagiarism lightly, as committing such a crime is quite the opposite.  Always use good notes for documentation and refer back to the sources to make sure all various types of documents are cited correctly.  Writing a research paper can be strenuous and become overwhelming sometimes, but good organizational tools help to minimize some of that stress.

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