Plagiarism

I feel it is really important to always cite your sources to give credit whee edtisu., One thing I remember growing up and going to school is that he teachers always said "Don't copy diectly from a book, you can rearrange the words and then you make it your own". Of course this was probably high school or maybe even grammar school. This hs always stuck with me though, so now here I am learning at 37 yrs old that this is not ok. I feel if you don't properly cite your sources within you paper and on the reference page that 1. you are not giving credit to the original author and 2. you are losing the creditbility of your own paper andyou self; and who's goi to believe anything you write if you aren't honest. I think learning aout plagiarism is easy enough but learning APA is a thorn in my side, but eventually I will get it and hopefully become econd nature to me! :)jen