Yale Center for Teaching and Learning

Sample Plagiarism Warnings for Syllabi

Below are sample plagiarism warnings that faculty can adapt for their syllabi, written by Alfred E. Guy Jr. Permission is hereby granted to reprint or adapt in your syllabus without acknowledgment; for permission to use in a publication or a resource for teachers, please contact the Writing Center.

A short one

A Word About Plagiarism

You must document all of your source material. If you take any text from somebody else, you must make it clear the text is being quoted and where the text comes from. You must also cite any sources from which you obtain numbers, ideas, or other material. Use of ChatGPT or other AI composition software is not permitted. If you have any questions about what does or does not constitute plagiarism, ask! Plagiarism is a serious offense and will not be treated lightly. Fortunately, it is also easy to avoid and if you are the least bit careful about giving credit where credit is due you should not run into any problems.

A longer one

Plagiarism

The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. In this course, you must be honest and truthful. Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s work, words, or ideas—including those generated by AI composition software—as if they were your own. Here are three reasons not to do it:

  • By far the deepest consequence to plagiarizing is the detriment to your intellectual and moral development: you won’t learn anything, and your ethics will be corrupted.
  • Giving credit where it’s due but adding your own reflection will get you higher grades than putting your name on someone else’s work. In an academic context, it counts more to show your ideas in conversation than to try to present them as sui generis.
  • Finally, Yale punishes academic dishonesty severely. The most common penalty is suspension from the university, but students caught plagiarizing are also subject to lowered or failing grades as well as the possibility of expulsion. Please be sure to review Yale’s Academic Integrity Policy.

You can find a fuller discussion of using sources and avoiding plagiarism on the Writing Center Website.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION