Avoiding Plagiarism

Dear students, here’s a super-simple tip on how to avoid plagiarism. Imagine someone reading your sentence and asking, “How do you know that?” If the answer is something like “I read/heard/saw it somewhere” or “somebody told me,” you should acknowledge that source. If the answer is something like “everybody knows that,” you probably don’t need to cite a source—but perhaps verify that the knowledge is really as common as you think.

Chris Heard, on Facebook

If the above quote doesn’t do the trick, you might get your students to read this CNN article about Monica Crowley’s plagiarism.