PELHAM HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA CENTER

The mission of Pelham High School is to educate students so that they may pursue life goals, 
participate fully as active citizens, and become socially responsible community members.

PHS ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

Plagiarism is the use of someone else's words or ideas without proper documentation.  In order to avoid plagiarism, you need to carefully distinguish your own ideas and words from the ideas and words of others.  You must give credit to another writer for ideas and information by accurately identifying the source.  It is not enough merely to rearrange the order of another writer's words or to intersperse some words of your own.

• Learn how to acknowledge sources in your writing.  Know the rules that make proper acknowledgment easy.  These rules are explained in writing courses, by English teachers, and in English handbooks.
• Consider three different acts as plagiarism:  (1) failure to cite quotations and borrowed ideas; (2) failure to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks; and (3) failure to put summaries and paraphrases in your own words.
• Acknowledge the source of a quotation.  When you use the exact words of another writer, make clear that the words are being reprinted from another source.  Use quotation marks for short quotations, or set off a long quotation using  block-indentation.  Even short quotations of another person's writing must be explicitly documented in MLA format.   
• Acknowledge the source of a paraphrase or a summary.  When you paraphrase or summarize an author's words, identify the author and the author's   original work.  You are guilty of plagiarism if you half-copy the author's sentences, either by mixing the author's phrases without using quotation marks or by substituting your own synonyms into the author's sentence structure.
• Take notes clearly and completely.  Label all notes taken in the library or elsewhere with the "Works Cited" information needed for full references.  You must document any statistics, little-known facts, tables, graphs, and diagrams. 
• Resist the temptation to look at the source while you are summarizing or paraphrasing.  Close the book, write from memory, and then open the book to check for accuracy.
• Never hand in a paper written by someone else and present it as your own.  You know you are guilty of plagiarism on this one.
• Never have anyone else write any part of your paper.  Every person has a unique way of stating an idea.   Someone else cannot write your ideas.  Be careful how closely you work together with someone on a paper. 
• Manage your time.  Prepare early for deadlines.  Remember that deadline dates are the last date that the paper will be accepted.  Try to pass the paper in earlier than the deadline. You will avoid desperately seeking anywhere for words and ideas to fill the pages.

Penalties for Plagiarism

Discovery of plagiarism can lead to several penalties, including a 0 on the paper,  failure of a course, and/or a referral to the Assistant Principal.  Please see the rule within the PHS Discipline Code.

      I have read and I understand the Pelham High School Statement on Plagiarism.

            Signed _______________________________  Date ______________

Citing Sources-Avoiding Plagiarism

Using Quotation Marks:

Original Source:

No animal has done more to renew interest in animal intelligence than a beguiling, bilingual bonobo named Kanzi, who has the grammatical abilities of a 2 1/2 year old child and a taste for movies about cavemen. 

                                                                                       --Eugene Linden, "Animals," p. 57

Plagiarism:

According to Eugene Linden, no animal has done more to renew interest in animal intelligence than a beguiling, bilingual bonobo named Kanzi, who has the grammatical abilities of a 2 1/2  yearold child and a taste for movies about cavemen (57).

Acceptable Documentation:

According to Eugene Linden, "No animal has done more to renew interest in animal intelligence than a beguiling, bilingual bonobo named Kanzi, who has the grammatical abilities of a 2 1/2 year old child and a taste for movies about cavemen" (57).

Summarizing or Paraphrasing:

Original Source:

If the existence of a signing ape was unsettling for linguists, it was also startling news for animal behaviorists.

                                                                                           --Davis, Eloquent Animals, p. 26

Plagiarism:

The existence of a signing ape unsettled linguists and startled the animal

behaviorists (Davis 26).

Plagiarism:

If the presence of a sign-language-using chimp was disturbing for scientists studying language, it was also surprising to scientists studying animal behavior  (Davis 26).

Acceptable Documentation:

When they learned of an ape's ability to use sign language, both linguists and animal behaviorists were taken by surprise (Davis 26).

According to Flora Davis, linguists and animal behaviorists were unprepared for the news that a chimp could communicate with its trainers through sign language (26).

Source:  Hacker, Diana.  A Writer's Reference.  Third Ed.  Boston, MA:  Bedford Books of St. Martin's              

                    Press, 1995.

Elizabeth Strauss, Media Generalist
Pelham High School Library Media Center
bstrauss@pelhamsd.org