Avoid Accidental Plagiarism in Academic and Nonfiction Writing
You’re writing a nonfiction book about different kinds of horror stories. You want to include a chapter about ecohorror, or horror that is based around a fear of nature. So you find an ecohorror expert, Bernice M. Murphy, and read her work “‘Why Wouldn’t the Wilderness Fight Us?’ American Eco-Horror and the Apocalypse.” You find some great ideas and sentences that you want to include in your book.
But you want to make sure that you’re including these ideas in the right way.
As Kenneth Burke explained in “The Philosophy of Literary Form,” when we write academic or nonfiction works, we’re adding our voices to a larger conversation that has been going on for centuries and will continue after we’re gone. Nonfiction writers normally use other writers’ ideas to bounce off of and prove their point. However, it can be easy to accidentally plagiarize, or claim another writer’s original words or ideas as your own.
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is claiming another person’s words or ideas as your own. This can look like:
Copying and pasting a sentence or paragraph into your work
Slightly changing the words of a sentence and putting in your work
Writing someone else’s idea in your own words without giving them credit
Paying for somebody else to write your academic paper for credit
The consequences of plagiarism can be dire. If you plagiarize, you can be kicked out of education institutions, lose your job, be sued, or be shunned by other writers or the academic community.
However, many times, plagiarism is accidental. You might forget to put quotes around a sentence or forget to paraphrase something in your notes. But don’t fret too much; to avoid accidental plagiarism, there are some steps you can take.
Rules to Avoid Plagiarism
Avoiding accidental plagiarism requires paying careful attention to your sources and notes.
Take careful notes. Keep track of where each idea comes from. Write down the name of the book or article and the author’s name. Paraphrase what you read. If you want to include a word-for-word direct quote, carefully put quotation marks around it in your notes.
If you quote something word-for-word, put quotation marks around the text. If you like the way an author puts a sentence, you can use it in your own writing. Just put quotation marks to let the reader know they aren’t your words!
Paraphrase the information instead. Paraphrasing is putting something in your own words. This doesn’t mean just replacing a few words with synonyms. You need to write an original sentence that retells
Add a citation to credit the author. Whether you choose to paraphrase or use quotes, you ALWAYS need to include citations which give credit to the right person. Include the author’s name, the title of their work, and where the reader can find their work. (For more information about how to add citations, I’ll post an update soon!)
Plagiarism FAQs
Can you plagiarize yourself?
YES! If you previously published a work and want to reference it, you need to include citations for yourself. Kinda weird, but true!
What if I’m not sure I successfully avoided plagiarism?
There are some tools you can use to help you, including plagiarism checkers such as Turnitin (the teacher’s best friend) and Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker. These can analyze your paper and tell you what percentage of your writing original and what percentage is someone else’s words, as long as those words are included on the internet or academic databases.
An experienced editor can also help you catch areas of accidental plagiarism in your writing! They can go above and beyond the services provided by plagiarism checkers by helping you check print or book sources, double-check citations, and make sure that you followed all the rules to avoid plagiarism.
(Oh, hey, I’m an experienced editor who can help you with this! Check out my website and services for more information!)
