PLAGIARISM

PLAGIARISM
The standard penalty for violations of academic integrity in this course will be an F
grade for the course. Such violations include cheating on an exam, helping someone else to
cheat, resubmitting a paper written for another class, and plagiarism. Be warned: GSIs are
quite experienced at detecting such deception.
Plagiarism is the representation of someone else’s words or ideas as one’s own.
Students and others often misunderstand what plagiarism is, and its seriousness as
academic misconduct. The most egregious cases of plagiarism are easy to avoid because
they are so obviously dishonest:
♦ Wholesale copying of passages from works of others into one’s homework, essay,
term paper, or dissertation without acknowledgment.
♦ Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment.
♦ Paraphrasing another person’s characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or
other literary device without acknowledgment.
♦ Turning in someone else’s paper as your own
♦ Allowing someone else to turn in a copy of your paper as his or her own
♦ Downloading a paper from the internet and altering it a little to fit the class
♦ Employing a “research service”
Other cases of plagiarism are more subtle. Sometimes students plagiarize
unwittingly, out of carelessness or ignorance of the standards for attributing ideas to their
sources. However, ignorance is no excuse. You are responsible for knowing the standards
and taking care to follow them.
Whenever you make use of another’s words or ideas in a paper, you must give
proper credit. Usually this means inserting a footnote or a parenthetical reference. If you’re
not sure how to give a proper reference, consult a style guide or your GSI. Your GSI can
also answer questions about when you must give a reference. If in doubt, play it safe.
You must provide a reference not only when you use the exact words of another, but
also when you paraphrase her words, summarize her ideas, or borrow her metaphors. When
you do use someone’s exact words, be sure to mark them as such, either by putting them in
quotation marks or by setting them off from the main text and indenting them on both
sides. Be careful not to change the wording at all in a direct quotation; if you must change
it, use square brackets to indicate your changes.
When you paraphrase, state the author’s ideas in your own words. Don’t just
rearrange the words in the sentence and replace some of the words with synonyms. Note:
even though you’re using your own words, you still need to give a reference, since the idea
is not yours. Finally, if you work with another student on your paper, acknowledge this in a
footnote.


source
Near Eastern Studies | Introduction to Egyptology
Carol Redmount | Fall 2005
University of California, Berkeley