Write and Cite

What is Plagiarism?

According to Bastyr University's Academic Honesty policy, "plagiarism occurs both when one reproduces, without acknowledgment, another’s words, and when one paraphrases another’s ideas or arguments in a way that leads the reader to believe they originated with the paraphraser." You are responsible for what you write, even if you were unaware of plagiarism at the time.

Here are some examples of actions that can lead to charges of plagiarism:

• Copying, quoting or summarizing a source without properly citing it;
• "Patch-working", or paraphrasing someone else's work by simply rearranging their words, without acknowledgment;
• Cutting and pasting text from a webpage without attributing the source;
• Copying text from any document, published or unpublished, and presenting it as your own;
• Submitting a paper that someone else has written as your own work.

The good news is this: if you properly cite your sources, you're not plagiarizing. But be careful not to use too much material from other sources--you could still be held accountable for copyright infringement if you use large portions of another's work.

To quote again from Bastyr's Academic Honesty policy: "Academic work is evaluated on the assumption and the expectation that the work presented is the student’s own, unless designated otherwise."

We advise you to read the Academic Honesty policy in its entirety.