Chapter 51 of Rules for Writers talks about plagiarism and how you can avoid it. It's all about keeping a good record of the sources that you've used. Hacker lays out three steps that you must take. Keep a working bibliography, keep track of the material that you use, and avoid unintentional plagiarism.
A working bibliography is a record of the sources that you've made use of. You can annotate this bibliography with the key points, which will help you avoid plagiarizing. Next, insure that you keep track of your source materials. It's a good idea to have a photocopy or printout of the sources because you can annotate the source. It will allow you to get a start on your note taking. Finally, while taking notes, avoid unintentional plagiarism. When taking notes, avoid looking at the source. This way you're able to take notes without plagiarizing. If you want to use direct quotes from your source you must give credit to the author. There are three kinds of note taking, summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. All these types of notes require page references.
I've never had much trouble with plagiarism. I do worry about it though because you can unintentionally commit this offense. In order to avoid doing this, i'm going to try to take Hacker's advice. When i'm taking notes I am going to make sure to write down the page numbers from which i'm extracting quotes. Sometimes I do this at the last minute and I can't find the page from which i'm quoting the author. Also when taking notes I have to be better about not looking at the source so much. This way I can write things down in my own words and it won't be as likely that i'll plagiarize.
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