Plagiarism is "The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft." (Oxford English Dictionary online).
Plagiarism is a serious crime in the academic world. Please refer to the UCT Student Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism.
Brief simple steps in avoiding plagiarism:
During preparation
Whenever you consult a source and intend to take notes, start by documenting reference of the source. This will enable you to remember the source of specific idea.
Include the following elements in your reference:
During writing
When writing your essay or assignment, include a brief citation of a source after the ideas incorporated in your statements. If you are using Harvard style, the brief citation would be written as (Author, year).
For detail guidance on what type of ideas are worth citing, please refer to UCT Student Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism.
At the end of your essay, create a reference list in a logical order. Remember every source you have cited in your essay needs to have full reference. Consult a referencing style guides to get instructions on how to organize elements of references with examples. Please refer to Referencing page in this guide for more help.
Final stage
Include a plagiarism declaration page with your signature specifying which Referencing style/convention you used.
Select appropriate plagiarism declaration content from Standard Plagiarism Declarations.
Finally, refer to the 10 point avoiding plagiarism checklist to make sure that you have taken the necessary steps.