Academic Integrity and Plagiarism

All written work submitted for a course, except for acknowledged quotations, must be expressed in the student's own words. It must also be constructed upon a plan of the student's own devising. Work copied without acknowledgement from a book, from another student's paper, from anywhere on the internet, from Artificial Intelligence sources, or from any other source is plagiarized. Plagiarism can range from wholesale copying of passages from another's work to using the views, opinions, and insights of another without acknowledgement, to paraphrasing another person's original phrases without acknowledgement.

The policy of the Department of English Language and Literature is to treat any act of plagiarism with severity. A student’s ignorance of plagiarism, either in general or in any of its particular aspects, is no excuse or defense. Neither are a student’s benign intentions an acceptable excuse.

A student caught plagiarizing automatically receives a failing grade for the work in question or for the entire course. A repetition of plagiarism at any time during the student’s studies in the Department is grounds for permanent dismissal from the English Department. The department may decide to refer you to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs for a hearing that could result in expulsion.

The following constitute acts of plagiarism:

1. Absence of quotation marks around any idea or observation – whole or in part—not your own and from an article, a book, a website, or a person (including the person’s notes, articles, and oral help). If the exact words of a source are used, both a footnote and quotation marks around the quotation exactly must be used. Simply giving a citation in the bibliography, or even only a footnote, even if it is precise, is not sufficient.
Although the use of a single word which another source suggests need not usually be quoted or footnoted, significant phrases or clauses borrowed verbatim from another source must be identified as such. Changing a word or a few words in a sentence or paragraph, paraphrasing, or rearranging the order of the words in a sentence or paragraph, does not alter the fact that both idea and words have been taken from another source in a significant manner. The passage must be footnoted, and all the words borrowed from the source must be put in quotation marks to avoid plagiarism.

2. Absence of acknowledgement of one or more sources being paraphrased or patchwritten.

3. Any use of AI assistance such as ChatGPT. This technology is strictly forbidden.

If you have any questions about citation conventions, consult section 3 of the department’s Writing Resources page, found here.