Plagiarism (noun) - The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

- The New Oxford American Dictionary

Plagiarism is a very serious offense, both in academia and the professional world. The consequences of plagiarism can range from an "F" on an assignment or in the class, to actual expulsion from the college. Pierce's Academic Integrity Policy explains what is expected of students.

Plagiarism ranges from the obvious:

• Buying a paper online and passing it off as your own
• Copying another person's paper and passing it off as your own
• Hiring someone to write a paper for you
• Copying large sections of text and passing it off as your own writing

To the not so obvious:

• Using the words of a source too closely when paraphrasing
• Not citing someone's original ideas
• Presenting facts without saying where you found them
• Handing in a paper that you already earned credit for in another course

Unfortunately, ignorance of the rules of plagiarism is not a defense. It is your responsibility to make sure work that you hand in is not plagiarized in any way.

So, how do you avoid plagiarism?

The main rule to follow is to give credit where credit is due. If the idea, thoughts, words, etc., originated from outside of you, then you need to document it.

Here is a brief list of things that must be documented:

• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium

• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing

• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase

• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials

• When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media

Here is a brief list of things that do not need to be documented:

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject

• When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments

• When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.

• When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents)

• When you are using generally-accepted facts, e.g., pollution is bad for the environment, including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities, e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally-accepted fact.