The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines the verb plagiarize as "to use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own" or "to appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another). The Latin root of plagiarize is plagiarius which means kidnapper.
Plagiarism is also addressed in the Methodist University Academic Catalog which states that
"anything that is written in a paper, book report, or any other assignment must be in the student's own words or must properly and fully indicate the source(s). Anything that students copy word for word from another source is a direct quotation. All direct quotations must be shown as such and must be properly documented. Students must also rewrite paraphrased material in a style and language that are distinctively their own; merely rearranging the words found in a scholarly source is plagiarism. Material that is paraphrased must be documented. For methods of documentation and all others aspects of manuscript form, students should follow either current practices advocated by the Modern Language Association (MLA) or other reliable manuals recommended by individual departments and/or professors."
For more information on this, please consult the Methodist University Academic Catalog or your academic advisor.
If your professor has enrolled your class in Turn-It-In, the anti-plagiarism software, you will want to know how to open your account and submit assignments. For information on using Turn-It-In, go to the library's Turn-It-In Student Guide. For assistance with Turn-It-In, please contact the Davis Memorial Library Reference Desk at (910) 630-7123.
Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism