ACC Library Study Guides: Documentation & Plagiarism 

Writers value their work. To steal words or ideas that are another writer's property is grossly unfair. It is intellectual theft. Plagiarism also prevents students from finding the most important ideas of all -- their own.

All colleges, schools, and universities, including Austin Community College, consider plagiarism a scholastic offense and punish students for it. To avoid such charges, you must document your writing.

The following articles all describe real life examples of plagiarism and its consequences. (The following citations are not formatted to style).

The Internet can be a useful source of information for writing papers. However, because you might be using the same computer to search the Internet and write your paper, it is very easy to plagiarize web sties.

But remember -- the Internet's convenience and ease-of-use means that your professor might also be using the Internet to see if you've plagiarized an online source. The Internet makes it easier to steal others' ideas and to get caught at it! All words and ideas that you use from other sources, electronic or print, must be documented.