Plagiarism

=Plagiarism= (from Wellesley High School Social Studies Department, //Writing Through the Social Studies,// 2008-2009)

“Plagiarism - knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one's own work in any academic exercise. This includes submitting without citation, in whole or in part, prewritten term papers of another or the research of another, including but not limited to commercial vendors who sell or distribute such materials.” 1

Plagiarism is the act of taking the words, ideas, data, illustrations, or statements of another person or source, and presenting them as one's own. Each student is responsible for learning and using proper methods of paraphrasing and footnoting, quotation, and other forms of citation, to ensure that the original author, speaker, illustrator, or source of the material used is clearly acknowledged. 2

“In keeping with the responsibility of the school to teach standards of scholarly work generally accepted in colleges and to promote the integrity of its students, plagiarism is regarded as a most serious matter and will be handled as a form of cheating.” 3

To avoid plagiarism, you must fully and clearly state the extent and nature of your borrowing from any source. If you do not understand what plagiarism is or how to properly cite material, check with your teacher.

Whether intentional or not, plagiarism is unacceptable.

Examples of plagiarism include but are not limited to: • work not actually written by you. This includes using the exact words of a source without quotation marks even if you footnote or otherwise cite a source. It also includes cutting and pasting from any source, including an electronic source, without full and correct citation of that source. • work in which you have incorporated as your own feedback you receive from others. • ideas taken from books, magazines, television, films or any other sources that you present as original work. • data that is not the result of you or your group's actual experimentation/analysis. • ideas taken or copied from Cliffs Notes, SparkNotes or similar sources. • thoughts, information, interpretations or organization of ideas without proper citation. • sentences and paragraphs of borrowed material paraphrased by just changing a few words or rearranging sentences. • work in which you have not sufficiently disrupted the structure of the original source. (This is why it’s important to write one piece of information on each note card and to intersperse facts and ideas from different sources in your writing.)

1 University of Massachusetts, Dean of Students Office: Academic Honesty (2006), http://www.umass.edu/dean_students/code_conduct/acad_honest.htm (accessed June 18, 2007). 2 Boston College, Academic Policies and Procedures: Academic Integrity, (September 21, 2006), http://www.bc.edu/offices/stserv/academic/resources/policy/#integrity (accessed June 18, 2007). 3 Wellesley High School, Wellesley High School Student Handbook, 71.