What is plagiarism? It comes from the latin word Plagiarius, meaning "kidnapper."
   
  According to Webster's Dictionary it means "to steal and pass off (ideas or words of another) as one's own; using a created production without crediting the source; to commit literary theft; to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source."
  The "copy and paste method" of doing an assignment would be an example of plagiarism.
   
Questions. 1. Without giving credit to the author, can you take the exact words of an author and write them as your own words?
  2. Without giving credit to the author, can you rephrase the author's words and write them as your own words?
  3. Without giving credit to the author, can you take the author's outline of ideas and put them into your writing as your outline of ideas?
   
  4. If you give credit to the author, can you take the exact words of an author and write them as your own words?
  5. If you give credit to the author, can you rephrase the author's words and write them as your own words?
  6. If you give credit to the author, can you take the author's outline of ideas and put them into your writing as your outline of ideas?
   
Suggestions. You should use information from different authors, but you want your writing to be your own. As much as possible you want the ideas or "voice" to be yours.  As much as possible make the word choice your own.  You should order the information you get from different authors into your own outline sequence.

 Conclusions, inferences, observations, and opinions you make on your own are good ways to make your writing an original work. Teachers should expect you to find information from a number of sources. Many of your assignments should have guidelines, situations, and scenarios. More of your assignments in the future will involve situations for you to solve using the information found from your research.