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Some of you may be familiar with plagiarism, and may think of it as "harmless" and difficult for your teachers to detect, but in fact, plagiarism will hurt both you and the person who wrote the work. You would be taking credit for someone else's hard work and efforts, which is extremely unfair. In this article I will inform you of three easy ways to avoid plagiarism.
Quote what you have used
If you are going to be taking information from someone else's work, simply use quotation marks! Then let your reader know who wrote the information and any other info found on said article by using the second step in this article––citing your work.
Cite your work
Depending on the style of formatting you are using (MLA, Chicago, APA) you can cite the information you collected to give proper credit to its original source. Your teacher will indicate which style is appropriate to use for the assignment. There are many websites that will help you to properly cite your web sources. Citation Machine is one of these helpful sites. But be careful! If not done properly, you may have still committed plagiarism.
Use your own words
If you have really run out of ideas, or the author has a better understanding of the concept, use it. But paraphrase it using your own words and interpretation--this way you will have the same idea but coming from your perspective.
If you are really having a hard time coming up with ideas or simply struggling with writing talk to your teachers. They are always here to help.