Plagiarism is the act of copying ideas, words, images, or other creations, and passing them off as your own. If you use another person's words or ideas in your assignments or essays, you must acknowledge the original author and indicate the work from which you took the material. This is known as referencing.
There are many different conventions for referencing and creating bibliographies - e.g. the UCT Author-date referencing style, the APA referencing style, the MLA referencing style, etc. For guides to using these styles, see our Referencing Help.
