Online documents make it very easy to cut and paste information without thinking and without giving proper credit. Make sure you understand how to cite your sources.
The Online Writing Center at Purdue University (Purdue OWL) is an excellent online resource to help you cite your resources properly. It also offers tips on how to construct a quality term paper. For this class you will be using MLA style or APA style.
Beware of Purdue's Owl and do not use its citation generator. Refer to the many examples instead.
See also the Excelsior Online Writing Lab's section on Citation and Documentation.
When it is time to gather all of your notes and start writing the paper, avoid the most common mistake - plagiarism. Plagiarism is not only taking large parts of someone else's work and not attributing credit to that author; paraphrasing sections of a work, even using synonyms and citing the work, is also plagiarism.
Even if the ideas are rewritten, the source of the idea must be cited and the author given credit.
For further information, see the plagiarism video in the Research Den or the material on paraphrasing from the OWL at Purdue.
