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Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic Essays

When submitting academic essays, you need to ensure that there is no plagiarism. This is because if you are accused of plagiarism, you will have to provide the proof to clear your name. The best way of avoiding such an accusation is to be aware of what constitutes plagiarism and ensuring that you do not commit it.

Definition

Simply put, plagiarism is the stealing of words or ideas. This means that you have used sentences or phrases or even ideas in your essay that others have used before you without acknowledging it.

Use Quotation Marks

When writing an essay you will often have to state the opinion and ideas of others. If you are using someone else's ideas verbatim, that is word for word, just enclose it in quotation marks and acknowledge the author in the footnotes.

If you are paraphrasing another writer's words, then introduce the paraphrase by writing "as stated by so and so in the book." This kind of explicit and honest acknowledgement will prevent you from being accused of plagiarism.

Ideas

While straight lifting of words is easy to identify and acknowledge, sometimes students end up writing an entire essay based on another person's ideas. It is vital to remember that the thesis or conclusion of your essay has to be original and your own. Also, the arguments of your essay should not closely follow that of another writer in its entirety.

Extensive Copying

A related issue to that of copying ideas from some other writer is to quote so extensively that there is very little original thought or writing in your essay. Even if you have acknowledged every source from whom you have copied, it is still considered plagiarism if you have not presented your own reasons and arguments to lead to an original conclusion.

Steps to Take

The best way of keeping track of ideas and phrases used by others is to use reference cards when you do your research. Every time you copy a sentence, reference it extensively so that you can specify the author, the book, and the page number. If you use the quote in your essay, you will be able to easily include the relevant details in the footnotes and the name of the book in your bibliography.

Students should take care to avoid plagiarism since the penalty can be high. The best way of avoiding this is to come up with your own argument and conclusion. You should also take care to reference every quote or phrase you have borrowed to forward your argument and bolster your position.

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