Does your school have an honor code? I came from a high school with an honor code that applied not only to academics, but also to general life. This meant that we didn’t need locks on our lockers because we were all expected to be honorable human beings and respect items that did not belong to us. We were required to write HC or sign our initials on every test and quiz, and occasionally on homework assignments. I never felt like this was enough. I always wrote the whole statement. I had it memorized in English, French, Spanish, and even Latin; I was prepared for all of my classes. “I swear that I have not violated the Honor Code.” Such a simple phrase. I always liked to add my full name after the “I” and to add “on this test/quiz/assignment” at the end to make it relevant to the task at hand. And I always followed it with my full signature. Writing out the full statement made me really think about what I was saying, and the actions that I was swearing I hadn’t committed. Thus, coming to Wellesley, the Honor Code was nothing new to me. One thing about Wellesley though, was that I had to actively search online for the phrasing of the Honor Code. I have never been required to write it anywhere, but I always feel the impulse to write it when I email a paper to my professors or when I ask for an extension.
“As a Wellesley College student, I will act with honesty, integrity, and respect. In making this commitment, I am accountable to the community and dedicate myself to a life of honor.” We at Wellesley are expected to live by these words. Usually, I change “will act” to “have acted” to say that I have been honorable and honest when it comes to the assignment at hand. But what happens when that isn’t enough? What if your professor tells you that you plagiarized? In the academic world, plagiarism is such a serious offense that it’s almost worse than cheating.
Unfortunately, I know people who have been accused of plagiarism, and it isn’t pretty. Consequences go from getting an F on the paper to getting an F in the class; from being required to send interim drafts to your professor in the future, to going to the Honor Council; from being put on honor code probation to being suspended from the school. It all depends on the category of the offense. Is it word-for-word plagiarism? Did you cite the source in your bibliography but not within the paper? Was your paraphrasing too close to the original wording? Is your paper simply a string of quotes from other researchers without any of your own voice? You don’t want any of this to happen to you, so here are some tips on how to avoid plagiarism.
1. Don’t write your paper with the source in front of you. Close the book! Write from your head!
2. Notecards! Take notes from your source on note-cards. If you find a quote that is so fabulous, make sure to use quotation marks, and cite the page number. If not, paraphrase it on your note-card, wait a few days, and then paraphrase from your note-card into your paper.
3. Read a paragraph from the source; then try to restate it in your own words.
4. Once you finish writing your paper, compare your paper to the original source(s). How similar are they? Word clusters of more than 4 or 5 letters are too large. Consider re-phrasing.
5. It’s always better to over-cite. Cite every 3 or 4 sentences, every time you reference a new source, or anything that is not common knowledge or your own personal thoughts, rather than just at the end of a paragraph.
6. Make sure the paper has your voice in it…even research papers. Just because it is research does not mean you just compile what other people found. Your thoughts belong in there too; presumably you find something interesting about the topic. Plus, you should try to take a new view on the topic because what use is just regurgitating what others said?
7. When in doubt, cite…or ask your professor.
8. Start your paper early! Plagiarism most likely occurs when you’re up at 3am writing your paper the night before it’s due. You’re doing your research last minute, typing as you read, tying different sources together sloppily, taking little time to edit, and no time to compare what you wrote to what you read. It’s always better to ask for an extension, or just turn the paper in late than to turn it in on time without properly editing.
All I have to say is that it is better to be safe than sorry. You don’t want to end up not being able to study abroad because you accidentally plagiarized on a paper, received an F, that gave you a C+ in your foreign language class, which brought your GPA down just under the application cutoff, and you have to figure out some way to explain it to your parents. It happens, trust me. Not to mention, being accused of plagiarism is no fun matter. Someone I know was so distraught that she stopped eating for almost a week, and felt sick to her stomach and unable to complete other work because she could not stop thinking about how this had happened. Don’t put yourself in that situation.