Developed by Gayle Bushell for the
Resource Centre, October 2006
Your Guide to
Avoiding Plagiarism &
Creating Bibliographies

Plagiarism happens when..
• You use another person’s words, ideas or work without giving proper credit to the original owner.
• Whether the information came from a book, the internet, or an e-mail and whether or not it is a fact, a graph, or a picture, you must give proper credit to the original author or source.

?
• You find a great book that has the information you need and you copy the information word for word into your paper?
Your Paper
YES
NO
Click yes or no.

Make sure you place quotations around what ever information you copy word for word, and give proper credit to the source.
“
Your Paper
“
Click
here
to move to the next page.
Taken from :

Click
here
to TRY AGAIN.

?
• You are searching the internet and find a great web site with all sorts of information for your homework assignment. You read over the information, put the ideas into your own words and give proper credit to the source?
YES
NO
Click yes or no.

It’s important to take the information you read from a book or a web site and put it into your own words and then tell the reader where it came from.
Click
here
to move to the next page.

Click
here
to TRY AGAIN.

• You cut words, sentences or images from an internet site and paste them directly into your work without giving proper credit.
• You have a friend write a paper for you or use someone else’s paper as your own.
• You download or buy a paper off the internet and submit is as your own work.

If you do plagiarize, intentionally or unintentionally…
• You may have to redo the assignment
• Your parents may be contacted
• You won’t get a good grade on your assignment
D

Would you steal money from a store?
Candy from a baby?
Plagiarism is stealing. It is stealing the work and ideas that others have worked hard to create.

1.
How do you make sure you don’t plagiarize?
Start your research early!
Research takes time. It takes time to search for, evaluate and read sources. Also, if you plan ahead you won’t forget to keep track of what information came from what resource.

How do you make sure you don’t plagiarize?
2.
Keep track!
Use lists to help you keep track of the encyclopedias, books, websites and online databases you use in your research. The information in these lists will be used to create a
bibliography
.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY is a list of all the sources you used while doing your research. This list is usually found on the last page of your research paper.

How do you make sure you don’t plagiarize?
3.
When you “cite your stuff” you are creating the lists of the resources you used in your research.
Citations are the individual entries found in the
Bibliography that include information such as the author, title, date of publication or web site address of each resource you used.

• Who wrote it?
• What is the title?
• When was it published?
Your citation would look like this…
Author's name, last name first.
Copyright date.
Title of book, italicized .
Example: Kendell, Patricia. Leopards.
2003.

• What is the subject you looked up?
• What is the name of the encyclopedia?
• When was the encyclopedia published?
Your citation would look like this…
“The subject, in quotation marks.”
Copyright date.
Full title of encyclopedia, italicized.
Example: "Jaguar.“ International Wildlife Encyclopedia.
1991.

• Who wrote the article on the web site?
• What is the name of the article?
• What is the title of the home page?
• When did you visit this page?
• What is the address of the home page?
Your citation would look like this…
Name of the author, if available. “ Title of the article, in quotes.”
Title of the home page, if available, italicized.
Date you visited
<First part of the http address in square brackets>.
Example:
"Cheetah." The Cyber Zoomobile . 15 Nov. 2005.
<http://home.globalcrossing.net/~brendel/>.

• There are other resources you may have used in your research, such as a newspaper article or an online database.
• Please check the WCDSB Elementary
School Citation Style Guides * for full information on how to correctly create citations for these resources.
*These documents are being revised and links to them will be provided as soon as the revisions are completed.

• Plagiarism happens when you use another person’s words, ideas or work without giving proper credit to the original owner.
• Plagiarism is STEALING.

• If you do plagiarize, intentionally or unintentionally, you could have to write the assignment again, your parents may be contacted and you probably will not get a good grade on your assignment.

• To prevent yourself from plagiarizing
– Start your research early.
– Keep track of what resources you use in your research.
– Cite your stuff. Use the lists you kept of the resources you used to create citations for a bibliography.

1 st offence:
• Your parent will be notified.
• You will review the power point we viewed as a class.
• You will re-write the work you plagiarized, in your own words.

2 nd offence:
1. Your parent will be notified.
2. Re-read the power point we viewed as a class.
3. You will re-write the work you plagiarized, in your own words.
4. You will write a paper on plagiarism. It will include the following: a. A description of what plagiarism is b. What is your plan of action so that you will not plagiarize in the future?
c. This paper should be double spaced, one pages in length, and in all of your own words.

3 rd offence:
• Your parent will be notified.
• You will have a meeting with the teacher and principal.
• You will research a person in the academic world (like a professor) that has plagiarized and been convicted. You will describe, in your own words, the circumstances of the plagiarism as well as the consequences. You will reflect on how learning about this person has impacted you.
– With your good copy please attach any resources that you found online, books, magazines, or newspapers. You will also do a
Bibliography to accompany this research paper.