Tip 10: How to avoid “stealing” someone else’s style

This week’s topic is how your students can avoid plagiarism, including self-plagiarism.

Instructors, your students are probably finalizing the details of the last paper assignment of the semester. Therefore, provide your students with an overview of the Avoiding Plagiarism Guide (PDF, 141KB)opens in new window, explaining why it is important to appropriately acknowledge the authors or sources whose information they used in their work. Also, review with them your class policy on plagiarism and your institution’s policy on plagiarism so they are aware of the serious consequences of committing, even unintentionally, this unethical act.

For homework, ask your students to bring a hard copy/printed copy of their final paper to the next class meeting along with highlighters, if they have them.

During the next class period, ask your students to use their paper’s reference list as a guide to check their paper for a one-to-one correspondence between the sources listed in their reference list with that of the sources cited in the text of their paper. That is, direct them to mark up areas of their paper with a pen, a pencil, or a marker, or to highlight areas of their paper, that lack in-text citations and references; areas where they are direct quoting too much information or direct quoting information without proper attribution; and areas where the sources cited in the paper do not match the sources in the reference list.

Finally, tell your students to revise their paper based on the errors found during this activity.

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