Protect yourself from plagiarism, no matter how accidental. Here are some guidelines for avoiding plagiarism. 1. Paraphrase your content. Do not copy and paste text from the reference document verbatim. Instead, rephrase the idea in your own words. Understand the ideas in the reference source in order to paraphrase correctly.4. When in doubt, cite your sources. Rather than wondering whether or not to cite an outside source, the safest way to avoid an accusation of plagiarism is simply to cite it. Still, table of contents. Global plagiarism: plagiarizing an entire text. Textual plagiarism: directly copying words. Paraphrasing plagiarism: rephrasing ideas. Patchwork plagiarism: assembling sources. Self-plagiarism: plagiarizing one's own work. Frequently asked questions about plagiarism.5. Purchasing work. Even if you pay someone to write the text for you and the author does not claim rights to that work, this is still considered a form of plagiarism. Also known as collusion, you are always trying to present the result of: A block ation separates an ation from the rest of the text by starting a new line for the ation, indenting it, then indenting each additional line of the ation in the same way. Indenting means moving the line of text away from the left edge of the paper, usually an inch further than the rest of the text. Block indentation is, How to paraphrase. If you want to better express other people's ideas in your own words, here's how to do it: 1. Reread the original text to understand its meaning. The first step to paraphrasing effectively is to read and understand the content of the original source. Skipping this step puts the writer at risk of dependency.