Plagiarism. Plagiarism for the purposes of your paper for this course will be defined as representing any work or idea that you have not created as your own. It is especially easy when using electronic sources that allow you to cut and paste text to forget to cite a source. if you cut and paste information take a second to put quotations around information so that you remember that something is a quotation. 2  Also be sure that you record where you found the information-this will save you time in the long run.