Combating Plagiarism – part 2
Note-taking of “borrowed” ideas
Before putting your thoughts into words and before using the ideas of others in a paper, it is of much importance to know the details of all other sources. For instance, the internet links like the website from which you take some concepts in your paper, this should be found written along with other various references. You can also use other techniques to separate “borrowed” concepts from yours like highlighting them through colored pens (if you read it from printed media like books and newspapers) and (if it is from the internet or in soft copy) you can use different font styles and font colors or you can make it bold, italicized and underlined. It is also helpful to apply page numbers and write down the pages where the ideas you copy from someone else are included so that it would not be difficult for you to find the exact pages of these copied ideas. Do copy right there and then the bibliography and search engine URL of your sources so as not to forget them.
Citation of all possible references
Students have the tendency to always live up to the expectation of teachers thus leading them to take great ideas from someone else and from experts to be able to support their arguments. If you are one of these students, be sure to make an explicit cut between your original ideas and others’. If you are confused which ideas are absolutely your and which ideas are copied, it is wise to just cite the possible source where you take that idea from. This may be caused when you tweak and rephrase some sentences from a reference so it is very relevant to really know what you are doing and be familiar with the ideas you copied to distinguish it from yours.
