Writing with Integrity

Many students are unfamiliar with the criteria for cheating. From studies of student behavior, it appears that a large portion of students engage in behavior that most faculty would call cheating, and they have no problem with it. It’s very easy to cut and paste text from the Internet into your own writing, thereby making the implicit claim that the words are your own. But, claiming something for your own that you took from someone else is what we call cheating.

Cheaters will receive the maximum consequences allowable by the University

Why risk it?

Examples of cheating:

  1. Copying homework answers from someone else
  2. Cutting and pasting from internet sources, without referencing them.
  3. Submitting, for grade, any work that is not your own.

In my own work, I often need to extract information from someone else’s writing. It can be challenging to avoid using the same words. Changing prepositions is not enough.


Here are some hints to make it easier to extract information from others without cheating:

  1. Read and make notes on main points or main items of information. Don’t use whole sentences.
  2. Once you have enough notes, put them away for a few hours. The idea is to forget the original source’s prose while retaining the essence of the information.
  3. Write from your notes.
  4. Quotes from other sources can be useful, but reference them if you use them verbatum.

Sometimes you will want to quote a source. When you do this, set the text off as a complete paragraph and provide a reference. The format for this is explained in “Anatomy of a Science Pape.r”

In group work, you can apply the same principles. In this class, the extent of group work will be to gather information and make in-section or in-class presentations. Writing assignments are done individually. Since presentations will mostly be from “bullets,” rather than written papers, it should be easy to use your own words. Be sure that you don’t copy each other’s figures either.
All written assignments are submitted in computer readable form and it is feasible, therefore, to correlate every paper in the class, and from past classes. I will do this if I catch cheaters.

I sincerely hope that this paragraph is irrelevant to you.