Understanding how to avoid plagiarism
Most plagiarism is unintentional.
Plagiarism, as defined by the Student Conduct Code, means representing the work of someone else as your own without providing proper documentation of a source. Here are the examples taken from the Student Conduct Code along with resources on the Twin Cities Campus available to help you.
Type of Plagiarism |
Resource |
| Copying information word for word from a source without using quotation marks and giving proper acknowledgement by way of footnote, endnote, or in-text citation. | Understand how to properly quote, paraphrase or summarize sources with Student Writing Support. |
| Representing the words, ideas, or data of another person as one’s own without providing proper attribution to the author through quotation, reference, in-text citation, or footnote. | Learn about citations and style guides from the University Libraries. |
| Producing, without proper attribution, any form of work originated by another person such as a musical phrase, a proof, a speech, an image, experimental data, laboratory report, graphic design, or computer code. | Discover what attribution means in your discipline. Start by asking your instructor or professor. You can also ask a subject librarian. |
| Paraphrasing, without sufficient acknowledgment, ideas taken from another person that the reader might reasonably mistake as the author’s. | Learn how to properly quote, paraphrase or summarize sources with Student Writing Support. |
| Borrowing various words, ideas, phrases, or data from original sources and blending them with one’s own without acknowledging the sources. This is called patchwriting. | Make an appointment with a tutor from one of the University’s Student Academic Success Centers. |
