> But in school, and especially with non-fiction, we're so often told to "just re-word it to make it your own" which is actually the most insidious form of plag

> But in school, and especially with non-fiction, we're so often told to "just re-word it to make it your own" which is actually the most insidious form of plagiarism. I think you might be confused, or had unclear teachers. You're told to re-word it but still cite it. There are different combinations here: 1. Copy verbatim, no quotes, cite. Plagiarism, because you're copying the wording without quoting (even though you're citing). 2. Copy verbatim, quote, cite. Correct. 3. Paraphrase, no quotes, cite. Correct. 4. Paraphrase, no quotes, don't cite. Plagiarism if not "common knowledge". Teachers should be telling you to do 3 rather than 1. You are maybe confusing 3 with 4, thinking they were telling you to do 4? (Or your teachers were just wrong?) But the difference between 3 and 4 can actually get legitimately confusing in certain cases, even for academics, because there are a lot of ideas that are just "in the air" and it's not always clear if something is "common knowledge" or if there's some original citation for it somewhere.