As De Anza College students, you agree to abide by certain standards of academic integrity. One of the most important is to use the proper method of integrating reading material into your writing.
Plagiarism is a strict academic offense which entails hard sanctions. To plagiarize is to use another writer's words as if they were your own. To avoid plagiarism, one must learn to paraphrase another writer's prose, keeping the meaning of the original language but translating it into your own unique phrasing. Proper use of quotation will allow you to employ the exact words of the authors you read while making it clear that they are not your words.
Be aware that you must not at any time plagiarize language from any of the handouts I give you this quarter (prose I've written, prose from model student essays, etc.).