Communications

Date: Feb 23, 2010

To: All U.Va. Students

From: David Truetzel, U.Va. Honor Committee Chair

Subject: Important Information about Plagiarism and Paraphrasing from the Honor Committee

The Honor Committee has approved an educational supplement about plagiarism. The supplement is designed to further elucidate what exactly plagiarism is, and, importantly, what constitutes plagiarism by paraphrasing. The supplement describes both plagiarism and paraphrasing and gives examples of appropriate and inappropriate uses of sources.

The information contained in the supplement will be considered what a U.Va. student "knows or should know" for the purposes of determining guilt in an Honor trial. Therefore, I urge you to review the supplement, even if you think you already know about plagiarism. YOU ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS INFORMATION.

The Committee is working with a variety of support centers, including the Writing Center and the Learning Needs and Evaluation Center, to make the supplement widely available. The supplement is also available on the Honor Committee’s Web site at

http://www.virginia.edu/honor/documents/PlagiarismSupplementFINAL.pdf.

Please be sure to read the supplement at your earliest convenience. As always, questions about the supplement, what constitutes an Honor offense, or about the Honor Committee more generally, can be directed to us at 434-924-7602 or at www.virginia.edu/honor.

Thank you,

David Truetzel

Honor Committee Chair