How Do I Know When I'm in Trouble?
If citation is, ultimately, an opportunity for you to show what you can
do with other people's words, as we maintain, then avoiding plagiarism
is a relatively simple matter: you just need to make sure that you don't
represent "the words or ideas of another" as your own. And how
do you do this? Make sure that you signal when you are using the words
or ideas of another with quotation marks and proper page citation.
This actually sounds simpler than it is in practice, though, because
of the role that collaboration and peer review plays in the writing course.
It's one thing to make sure that you put quote marks around words you've
taken from an essay by Michael Pollan and that you've followed the quotation
with a parenthetical notation stating where the original passage is to
be found. It's another to know how or when you should acknowledge that
your thoughts have been shaped by class discussion, the peer review process,
collaborative work you've done outside class with other interested students.
Here are some rules of thumb we recommend to help guide you through the
gray areas, so that you can hand in your work confident that you have
not inadvertently raised suspicions about the originality of your work.
When we find ourselves called upon to make a determination as to whether
or not plagiarism has arisen in a class, the first thing we do is put
the papers under suspicion down next to each other to see just how and
where the thoughts and ideas overlap. If everything is going well in your
class, your writing will be influenced not only by your own readings of
the assigned essays, but also by class discussion, work with your peers,
and talk outside of class. This means that there will be some degree of
overlap between any two papers taken from within a given class; it does
not mean, however, that this overlap will produce papers that are identically
structured, draw on the same passages in the same order, make the same
connections, draw the same conclusions, use the same vocabulary. So, we
start by assessing the degree and the kind of overlap.
If you are concerned about the possibility that your collaborative work
with your peers, both inside and outside of class, may have resulted in
a paper that appears to be plagiarized, imagine your paper placed alongside
the paper of the peer you have worked most closely with. Imagine what
a neutral observer would make of reading those two papers side by side.
Does the possibility of such an occurrence concern you? If so, it's a
pretty good sign that you've relied too heavily on your peer during the
drafting and revising process and that you need to return to the assignment
with fresh eyes.
Starting over isn't easy, but it is a much better option than raising
questions about the originality of your work and the work of your peer.
If you can't meet the deadline, you should go to your teacher and explain
that your collaborative work swamped your own viewpoint. Your teacher
may or may not provide you with an extension, but the risk of receiving
a failing grade on a paper surely outweighs the risk of being suspended
or expelled.
Many of the plagiarism cases that come our way involve students who have
received outside help from people not affiliated with the writing course
and unaware of its conventions and concerns. This kind of help usually
leads to papers that use vocabulary words that the student writer does
not understand fully and makes arguments that the student writer may be
able to follow, but not be able to reproduce on his or her own. These
cases are often quite painful for the student, who may just have been
trying to get help and ended up getting a kind of help that puts his or
her standing at the university in danger.
When cases like this arise, we ask the student to summarize his or her
argument and we ask the student to define certain words that seem odd
or out of place when considered within the context of the surrounding
prose.
Can you explain why you chose to cite one passage rather than another?
Can you explain why you've structured your argument the way you have?
Can you identify the key terms in your argument and define them?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you've put yourself
in the position of relying too heavily on your tutor or mentor and are
at risk of handing in a paper that is less your work than the work of
the person who has helped you. Here, too, the best option is to set the
paper you've worked on aside and start over. And, here, too, our advice
is the same as above: If you can't meet the deadline, you should go to
your teacher and explain that your collaborative work swamped your own
viewpoint. Your teacher may or may not provide you with an extension,
but the risk of receiving a failing grade on a paper surely outweighs
the risk of being suspended or expelled.
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How Do I Protect Myself?
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