ACC Library Study Guides: Documentation & Plagiarism 

When you use information from other authors in your writing, you must be honest about revealing your sources. To do this, various formal methods of acknowledging where you gathered information have been developed. These methods are called "documentation." 

Plagiarism (pronounced PLAY-jar-ism) means using the words and ideas of another person as if they were your own. This includes both using the exact words or the ideas of another.