Plagiarism Policy

Wilson Central High School will use the following as a means for detecting and correcting plagiarism. Students caught plagiarizing material by any means will receive a zero for the assignment and possibly face disciplinary measures.

The following are clues that a paper contains plagiarized material:

• Mixed citation styles—for example, a student switches between MLA and APA citation styles. Teachers need to make sure they explain in the assignment which style is to be used.
• Lack of references or quotations—this usually is an indication that sections of the paper have been taken from general knowledge sources such as encyclopedias or websites.
• Unusual formatting—this may indicate a cut and paste job
• Off topic—this is usually an indication the paper has been downloaded or bought since it is either not on the assigned topic or it only minimally addresses the assigned topic
• Signs of datedness—either the student is using out-dated data or the paper itself is old. Teachers should require that most or all of the sources cited within the paper be dated within the last 10 years.
• Anachronisms—If the paper refers to long-past events as current, you can be certain the paper has been recycled.
• Anomalies of diction—indicates a cut and paste job from several sources. (The word choice/vocabulary throughout the paper will change)
• Anomalies of style—indicates a cut and paste job from several sources. (The writing style throughout the paper will change)
• Smoking guns—Obvious signs of plagiarism (bottom of the paper says “Thank you for using TermPaperMania”)

The following constitutes plagiarism:

1. Downloading, buying, or copying another person’s paper. This includes those written by siblings and friends—this also includes homework!!!!
2. Copying an article from a website or electronic database either in full or part and turning it in as your paper.
3. Cutting and pasting to create a paper from several sources.
4. Faking a citation.
5. Failing to provide a citation.
6. Failing to match citations to entries on the works cited page.
7. Rearranging the author’s original words (this is NOT paraphrasing!!!)
8. Using the author’s original words but using a thesaurus to change words (again, this is NOT paraphrasing!!!)
9. Failing to put quotation marks around directly quoted material.
10. Placing quotation marks around directly quoted material prematurely (continuing to copy verbatim from the source after inserting quotation marks or a citation.)