As an RDP student, you are expected to read, analyze, and respond to the ideas of others when writing your papers. However, you always have to acknowledge when you are using someone else's ideas.

To avoid accidental plagiarism, follow these steps:

1. Use your own ideas
2. Keep track of sources as you find them
3. Take notes as you research your topic
4. Learn how to cite your sources
5. Check your paraphrased text

You can avoid plagiarism by using your own ideas. It is important to use the ideas of others to support or reinforce your argument, but keep the focus of your paper on your ideas.

If you learned something in one of your courses, that is not considered your own idea. In that case, remember to cite the original source (e.g. your textbook, your instructor, lecture slides).

Accidental plagiarism often occurs when you simply forget where you read something. To avoid this, keep track of your sources as you find them!

There are several strategies to keep track of your sources:

• Use index cards
  You can use index cards to write down a source's author, title, and publication information. You can use one card for every source.
• Use a citation manager
  Zotero is a free research and citation manager. You can use Zotero to store information about every source.

As you research your topic, you should take notes about what you read. Good note-taking will help you remember which source a quote or an idea came from.

There are several resources to help you take good notes while researching:

• Taking Notes from Research Reading (University of Toronto)
  The University of Toronto's Writing Support has three steps for taking notes efficiently
• Oops! I Thought Your Words Were Mine (University of California, Los Angeles)
  The UCLA Library has a simple note-taking strategy

RDP Library has created online tutorials for three different citation styles.

These tutorials provide a guided introduction to each of these styles:

If you have paraphrased from a source, compare your paraphrased sentences to the original text. Be careful to check if you have accidentally used the same words or phrases.