13.2 Three Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism

To avoid plagiarism, remember to do the following:

Ask for help. Your professor, your campus libraries, and writing centers are great places to get information about sources and how to cite them.

Give yourself time. Make sure that you have enough time to complete your assignment. If you budget your time carefully, you will be able to ask for help when necessary and will not feel the pressure to “copy and paste” sections of writing.

Take notes. When you are researching, always drop in the last name of the author, or even just a note saying “CITE,” in your writing. Take down as much bibliographic (source) data as you can. This way you can keep track of your ideas and where they came from. You can format your citations later in the revision process.

This section is adapted from Plagiarism in Howdy or Hello? Technical and Professional Communication Copyright © 2022 by Matt McKinney, Kalani Pattison, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Anders, and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.