Statement on Academic Honesty

Southern Methodist University has an Honor Code; students are expected to pledge that any work that they turn in is the product of their own minds and efforts. When you sign your name to the Honor Pledge-"On my honor, I have neither given or received any unauthorized aid on this work"- you offer your own character as evidence that you have abided by SMU's Honor Code.

Each time you submit written work in your First-Year Writing class (or in any class), you automatically subscribe to the following:

1. You have not taken any words from any other piece of writing-published, unpublished, or online-without putting quotation marks around such words and indicating their source. This pledge pertains to phrases as well as whole sentences, and even to significant single words, such as those that express opinion or judgment.

2. You have not taken ideas from any source-including an online source-even if you express them in your own words in summary or in paraphrase, without giving credit to that source.

3. You have organized your material according to a plan of your own creation, based upon your own thorough exploration of the assignment.

4. While you may have asked someone for an opinion about your paper, you have received only suggestions. You have neither asked nor allowed someone else to write, revise, edit, proofread, or otherwise modify your work in any way.

SMU students understand that a violation of the Honor Code results in severe penalties. One minimum penalty given by the Honor Council is a notation of "Honor Violation" for the course, which will remain on a student's official transcript for three years after graduation. Other penalties recommended by the Honor Council can include deferred suspension for one calendar year, indefinite suspension, or even expulsion from the University.

Stone, Wilfred and J.G. Bell, Prose Style: A Handbook for Writers. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.