Plagiarism

To use someone else’s exact words without quotation marks and appropriate credit, or to use the unique ideas of someone else without acknowledgement, is known as plagiarism.

In doing your graduation assignment, you will need to read, make notes of important ideas, copy out or note important passages for exact reference. If you are not careful you may be tempted to literally reproduce or paraphrase the words or ideas of the sources you have consulted and present them as your own. If you have done this – intentionally or unintentionally – you have plagiarised, which is a very serious offence and is likely to lead to an insufficiency for your graduation assignment.

To avoid exposing yourself to charges of plagiarism you must acknowledge the source of any words you quote and always use quotation marks when quoting word for word. If the material quoted is more than three lines, use an indented format. In addition, you must acknowledge your source when you paraphrase or summarise someone else’s ideas, either by giving the exact reference in the text or by endnote. Therefore, when you use outside sources, document them!!

Your graduation assignment is your responsibility, the supervisor is there to help you, but it is your work that is being assessed!