Can Taking Notes Help Writers Avoid Plagiarism?

Plagiarism can seem like a scary word to students, but it doesn’t have to be. Today, I’ll be discussing inadvertent plagiarism and clarifying a process you can use to help you determine if you do need a citation. For this discussion, I define inadvertent plagiarism as a writer accidentally attributing words or ideas informed by an author they read to themselves.

Help yourself out by keeping notes as you read anything related to your subject or discipline. There are many note-keeping strategies out there and you can read more on our prewriting pages. The intention here is to ensure that not only are you keeping track of ideas you have while reading, but making it clear where something is your idea and where an idea belongs to an author. This is a method you can employ as you’re preparing to write your papers, but more importantly as you’re reading and taking notes. This step is effective at differentiating what you should cite and what’s your own analysis because it can be much more difficult to separate these aspects later in the process since you’ll have all these authors’ ideas in your brain mixing together to form larger conclusions and it will be tough to remember where each individual idea came from.

In the case that you didn’t keep notes or you still are unsure if you should cite, you can use the examples and checklist below to help you!

Example 1: In this course, I learned time-management skills.

You do not need to cite this statement, because this is your opinion and explaining your experience, and it’s a statement which is unique to you.

Example 2: Writing centers are valuable because they improve student confidence.

You need to check if you should cite this statement by looking at your notes to see if a source mentioned writing centers and student confidence improvement.

• If a source did mention this fact, then you need to cite this statement.
• If a source did not mention this fact, then you do not need to cite, but you will need to find a source to support this statement and avoid a personal opinion/generalization. For scholarly work, you want to avoid opinions/generalizations and instead support with research.

Example 2.1: Writing centers are valuable because they improve student confidence (Helakoski, 2017). Because writing centers improve student confidence, universities should use additional resources to support these services.

In this case, you have added a citation to your first statement. Do you need to cite the second statement here? If this is your own analysis, meaning that Helakoski or another source didn’t reach this particular conclusion, but instead it is you putting forth your analysis for the reader, then you do not need to cite the sentence. We have some great examples of explaining evidence on our evidence pages that go over analysis in conjunction with cited source material. In cases where you have analysis double check that a source didn’t reach this conclusion and that it is your own explanation for the reader to see if you should cite or not.

Example 3: The directive feedback method is when an instructor provides exact steps to revise a statement.

You need to cite this statement because you are clearly defining a term or method. Defining terms you have not created means that the definition of that term is informed by a source and therefore should be cited.

Example 4: All of the participants enjoyed visiting the writing center.

Unless you conducted this study, you need to cite this statement because it is a finding from a source. If it were a study you conducted, then it would be similar to Example 1 in that your statement would be unique to you and describing an action you completed. However, in this case, you did not complete this study and therefore need to cite this source since you are referencing the authors’ results.

Now that you’ve gone through some examples, here’s a checklist to determine if you should cite:

1. Is your statement an “I” statement which expresses an action you took or an opinion you have? You do not need to cite.
2. Is your statement a definition or explanation of a term? You do need to cite.
3. Is your statement a finding, statistic, exact wording, or paraphrased wording from a source? You do need to cite.
4. Is your statement analysis explaining source information for the reader? You need to double check if you should cite.

Keep notes as you go to avoid needing to double check with this checklist quite as much, and to have the correct citation information ready to go if you do come across something you think may need to be cited. If you are looking for help on citation formatting and frequency, you can review our how often to cite examples.

Claire Helakoski is a Writing Instructor  at the Walden Writing Center and hosts the Writing Center's podcast, WriteCast. Claire holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She has taught writing and Composition as well as acted as a writer and editor in a variety of mediums. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and enjoys reading, writing creatively, and board games of all kinds.

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