 You've probably previously heard warnings about plagiarism, and maybe it's a scary word for you. Something that pulls up concern about big, academic sanctions. How can we make it less scary? In this video, we'll talk about what plagiarism means, why citation is important, research practices for avoiding plagiarism, and campus resources for creating citations. Plagiarism is using material from your sources without giving credit to them. Doing this means you are stealing ideas from your sources. Plagiarism is included in our college's definition of academic dishonesty, along with cheating and fabrication. In addition to avoiding plagiarism, using citations also builds your credibility as a creator of academic knowledge and shows which sources influenced you. Crediting sources allow scholars, including you, to build a conversation from a distance over time. People who are influenced by the same articles show this by citing those articles and adding their new ideas to that conversation. Using a standard citation format like APA, Emilia, or Chicago gives readers a shorthand for deciphering which sources are being credited. This allows researchers like you to quickly follow citations to other work that might be useful about the same topic. Ways to safely use ideas from your sources include quoting, paraphrasing, and citing. Quoting a source is using a phrase or sentence exactly as you read it. To quote in a paper, you add quotation marks around this material. You then include an in-text citation and a full citation in your references list. Paraphrasing is using information very similar to that in an original source, but without using exactly the words from the text. When you paraphrase, set aside the original content and write the ideas in your own words, just like with quoting, include both an in-text citation and a reference entry. You also need to add an in-text citation and reference entry for a statistic, another author's idea, or other information that you read. You cite these because they aren't an original interpretation that you developed. These are all much easier to do with good research habits. When you're reading different materials, it can be easy to forget where your information comes from. Good notes help you know whether that citation should be for this article, or that book, and who is the author of that source again? Sometimes students play drives because they're rushing before an assignment is due, and don't give themselves time to track the ideas from their sources and check for good crediting practices before turning something in. Make sure to give yourself time to do work you're proud of, and remember, it's always better to do your own work even if it's later short, instead of running into the consequences of plagiarizing. Librarians can help you with creating citations and determining types of sources. The library has resources for citing in the subject guide section of our website, or get in touch with the options from the Ask a Librarian page. The Academic Success Center can help you with reviewing your paper draft for citations and can discuss other questions and concerns related to your writing.