Career and College Promise

SPCC's Academic Integrity Policy 

"Students enrolled at South Piedmont Community College are responsible for upholding standards of academic integrity. An academic integrity violation includes but is not limited to the following: cheating, plagiarism, fabrication/falsification, and complicity in academic dishonesty."

Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism

1. Learn how to cite sources properly.

2. When in doubt, cite the source. 

3. After you have finished reading something, set it aside, write it in your own words, compare it with what you read earlier in the source document, and refine your writing.

Signal to the reader discussion of a source (Signal Verbs)

Cite the source (Parenthetical Citation)

Comment how the source applies to your discussion

Avoiding Plagiarism - The Purdue Owl describes specific forms of plagiarism and how students should avoid accidentally plagiarizing their work.

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

These three ways of incorporating other writers' work into your own writing differ according to the closeness of your writing to the source writing.

• Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.
• Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.
• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

A good balance of the three would be 75% paraphrasing & summarizing, and 25% direct quotes.

• Using Quotations: General

• Quotations: APA 7th ed.

• Quotations: MLA 8th ed

Signal Verbs

Use signal verbs to introduce sources. Remember that the signal verb must be appropriate to the idea you are expressing.

* acknowledges * concludes * emphasizes * replies * advises * concurs * expresses * reports * agrees * confirms * interprets * responds * allows * criticizes * lists * reveals * answers * declares * objects * says * asserts * describes * observes * states * believes * disagrees * offers * suggests * charges * discusses * opposes * thinks * claims * disputes * remarks * writes * denies * rejects * addresses * shows *

Case 1: Plagiarism? 

You read: In 1973, a pilot named Emily Howell became the first female pilot on a scheduled American airline at Frontier Airlines. American and Eastern Airlines soon followed with women pilots.

You write: In 1973, Emily Howell became the first female pilot on an American airline at Frontier Airlines. Women pilots soon followed at Eastern and American Airlines (Smith, 2018).

Case 2: Plagiarism? 

You read: Some aspects of international travel were far from glamorous. In the 1970s, the price of oil went skyrocketing. Airlines flew their planes slower to conserve fuel because of the OPEC oil price increases.  

You write: According to Waldock (2017), rising oil prices in the 1970s forced airlines to find ways to conserve fuel.