Lhs Plagiarism 101

Plagiarism only happens when someone copies the exact words out of a book or from a website.

Rewriting someone else's ideas into your own words but not giving that author credit for the original ideas is an example of plagiarism in the form of

If I am following the MLA style of citing sources, then I need to cite sources in how many places?

If I find an idea online and I rewrite that idea entirely into my own words, I am still required to cite the source.

If I find an idea while I am researching and I just need to mention the information, then it is not necessary for me to cite the information.

While writing a paper about the last election, I mention one candidate claimed his proposal would lower the cost of Medicare by 10%. This isn't the focus of my paragraph, so I don't need to cite where I found my information.

If I find a paragraph of ideas I want to use in my paper and replace some key words in the paragraph before using it in my paper, then I don't need to place the information in quotation marks.

Three weeks ago I took notes from a book in the library. In my notes I forgot to indicate if one of my notes was a quotation or a paraphrase of the source. When I wrote my paper last night, I accidentally included information that matched the source almost word for word, but I didn't place it in quotation marks. While I did not format the information correctly, this was a mistake, so it is not considered plagiarism.