Overview: Our Goal

In our experience with writers over the years, we have observed two prevalent kinds of plagiarism:

  • word-for-word
  • paraphrasing

You need to be able to identify these kinds of plagiarism in order to avoid them. You also need to be able to discern when plagiarism does not occur.

This is the main focus of this instruction. When provided with original source material and a sample of student writing, you should be able to correctly identify which parts of the student version are word-for-word plagiarism, paraphrasing plagiarism, and which parts are not plagiarized.

But first: what you should do, not do, why, and what ...?

Bibliographic references are provided at the end of this Overview.

Next: What you should do