Modern Language Association (MLA) Guide 9th Edition: Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

Plagiarism is:

• Copying a published or unpublished text of any length, whether deliberately or accidentally and not giving credit to the source.
• Paraphrasing someone’s ideas or arguments or ideas without giving credit.
• Turning in a paper or thesis written by someone else 
• Reusing your own work and not citing it

Avoid plagiarism by:

• Taking careful notes of sources used.
• Take down page numbers.
• Importance of quoting properly.
• Paraphrase in your own words, restate the points.
• Write down idea of the original source using a different sentence structure 

When paraphrasing:

• Read and understand the original passage of your source.
• Restate the information in your own words that retain the original meaning, do not model the same sentence structure.
• Should be the same length as the original source.
• Give credit using MLA citation style.

Examples of plagiarism:

Passage in source
American Exceptionalism as our founders conceived it was defined by what America was, at home. Foreign policy existed to defend, not define, what America was.

Paraphrase (unacceptable)
American exceptionalism as the founding fathers envisioned the concept was given meaning by America as a homeland. Programs focused on other countries were there to protect America, not delineate it.

Paraphrase (acceptable)
As conceived, American exceptionalism was based on the country’s domestic identity, which foreign policy did not shape but merely guarded.
 

In your prose
As Walter A. McDougall argues, for the founding fathers American exceptionalism was based on the country’s domestic identity, which foreign policy did not shape but merely guarded (37).
 

Work cited
McDougall, Walter A. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776. Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

MLA Handbook, 9th Ed., section 4.