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Thank you for your question about the often confusing topic of plagiarism.

Some Instructors at Baker College set up a class account at turnitin.com.  This website will show what percentage of your paper has appeared in other publications, so it is an indicator of plagiarism. Check with your Instructor to see if your class has an account.

How to avoid plagiarism (Visit the APA Help guide to see how to do citations):

• If you use someone else's words, you must put "quotation marks" (author, year, pg number) around it and the citation information directly after it.
• If you use someone else's ideas, you must give them credit with a citation (author, year) after the idea.
• If you use a graph, image, video, sound, or other created content that you did not make yourself, you must give the creator credit with an appropriate citation.

Plagiarism is representing the ideas, expressions, or materials of another person without due credit. This includes paraphrasing or condensing ideas of someone else without giving proper credit or failing to document someone else's words without quoting that person. Plagiarism is a form of cheating and the Baker College Honor Code deals with the repercussions of committing plagiarism. 

Consequences of Honor Code Violations (Plagiarism or Cheating)

Violating Baker College's Honor Code can result in four possible consequences:

• Failure of the assignment
• Failure of the course
• Expulsion from Baker College
• Rescinding a certificate or degree

There are many common types of plagiarism, many are because the writer is unaware that he or she is plagiarizing. Some examples would be copying pieces of other people's work into your paper and writing very little of your paper yourself, or copying chunks of your paper from someone else and only changing a few words. Many students also forget to put quotation marks around the words they took from someplace else.

Sometimes students are more aware that they are doing something wrong, but might not realize it is still plagiarism. For example, messing up the citation information so that your instructor can't find the information you cited, forgetting the quotation marks on purpose, or mentioning information from a source that you didn't even put on your Reference page, are all examples of plagiarism.

Thank you for using ASK US. For more information, please contact your Baker librarians.