The most blatant form of plagiarism is taking an entire piece of writing and claiming it as your own work. Do not download an article, reformat it and submit it as your own. Do not buy an essay from a paper-writing service. Do not take a free paper off the Internet. Do not turn in another student's work as your own.
Do not take chunks of material from another source and splice them into your paper without acknowledgment. When you cite, you acknowledge the original source from where the information came. Even if you change some words, it would be unethical and still be plagiarism. Identify clearly where source material begins and ends by using quotation marks. Cite the material using the method appropriate for the writing. For example, if you are writing a paper using the Modern Language Association format, place the name of the author of the original work in parenthesis along with the page number the borrowed material came from after the ending quotation mark and before the sentence period.
Focus on what you want to say, not on all the source material you have collected. Support your point with facts, statistics and details. Give credibility to your point by presenting an expert's supporting statement. Bring your point to life with an example, observation or illustration. You should credit any information that you have summarized, paraphrased or quoted from any source, whether it is statistics, facts, graphics, song lyrics, phrases or sequences of ideas. Your reader can then see what is borrowed and what is yours. Use quotations sparingly. Restrict your quoting to key statements.
When you use quotations, work them into your writing as smoothly as possible. Use enough of the quotation to make your point without changing the meaning of the original quote. Use quotation marks around key phrases taken from the source. Fold source material into your writing as logically and smoothly as you can. State and explain your idea, creating a context for the source. Integrate the source effectively by explaining, expanding or refuting it. Use an attributive statement to tell the reader who you are citing. For example, David Smith of the University of Notre Dame argues, "the decision to go to war was based on fact."