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1. Home
2. Chapter One:
   Preparing for Research
3. Chapter Two:
   Matching Needs with Tools
4. Chapter Three:
   Computer Searching
5. Chapter Four:
   Finding Books
6. Chapter Five:
   Finding Articles
7. Chapter Six:
   Searching the Web
8. Chapter Seven:
   From Research to Writing
   • Introduction
   • At a table...
   • From research to writing
   • Plagiarism defined
   • Wrap-up
   • Read
   • Taking Notes
   • What is a paraphrase?
   • Paraphrasing to perfection
   • Good/bad paraphrasing
   • A Simple Test
   • A Simple Test Example #1
   • A Simple Test Example #2
   • Review
9. Chapter Eight:
   Citing Your Sources
10. Save My Progress
11. Go to my Saved Progress
12. Library Home

A simple test

Booth, Colomb, and Williams go on to give what they call "a simple test for inadvertent plagiarism." Here, in part, is what they suggest:

Be conscious of where your eyes are as you put words on paper or on a screen. If your eyes are on your source at the same moment your fingers are flying across the keyboard, you risk doing something that weeks, months, even years later could result in your public humiliation. . . . You are least likely to plagiarize inadvertently if, as you write, you keep your eyes not on your source but on the screen or on your own page, and you report what your source has to say after those words have filtered through your own understanding of them. (170, original emphasis)

Let's use the passage just quoted to perform our own "simple test." Remember the criteria:

To be acceptable (i.e., to not be considered plagiarism), a paraphrase MUST DO ALL THREE OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. It restates the information and ideas from the source accurately - whether it is a print or an electronic source.
2. It uses the borrower's own language and style, not the original author's. (Note that it is acceptable to mix some key phrases from the original source into the paraphrase IF you put those words or phrases in quotation marks.)
3. It clearly identifies the original author/source of the paraphrased material.