: What is the best way to avoid plagiarism when importing information from a source? I have been a habitual writer since my childhood but recently planned to move on to the next level and use

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Simple: don't "import" the information. Read, understand, process, and internalize the source. Then put the source to the side, and actually write your own words about a concept that you actually understand. Then add a footnote/ parenthetical citation giving credit to the source.

If, instead, you copy the information and try to change some words to avoid plagiarism, there's a good chance you'll end up committing plagiarism anyway.

Another simple way to avoid plagiarism: just copy and paste the whole thing, but put the whole thing in quotation marks and say "According to X, '...'". And then add the citation. Depending on the context, you may be violating copyright law, but it is certainly not plagiarism because you would not have claimed someone else's words or ideas as your own.

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First: If you're talking about a scholarly paper, you should always cite your sources. Then, pretty much by definition, it is not plagiarism. You can copy pages of material from somebody else word for word, and if you put in quotation marks and a proper footnote, it's not plagiarism. (It may be copyright violation, but that's a different question.) On the flip side, never ever ever copy someone else's exact words without putting it in quotes and giving a footnote.

Second: Minimize the use of long word-for-word quotes. If this is a scholarly paper and you're copying someone else's research or ideas, you still need to give a footnote. But it's generally considered lazy, bad form, generally not a good thing, to copy long sections from someone else's work word for word. Extract the part that is relevant to your point and put it in your own words.

If you're writing about a controversial issue it may be necessary to use an exact quote to make clear that you're not putting words in someone else's mouth. "Senator Jones admitted that he is a racist and a Nazi" would lead careful readers to question exactly what he said. "In his speech to the XYZ Society on June 3, 2014, Senator Jones said ..." would be much more persuasive. (You could be lying about the quote, of course, but that's verifiable.) Of course a subject doesn't have to be that inflammatory. A point about the history of the Hittites or about nuclear physics might be controversial enough among experts in the field that an unsupported statement that "Dr So-and-So agrees with me" might be questioned.

But besides that, you rarely need exact quotes or long quotes. You can easily write, for example, "Newton said that the same force that makes an apple fall to the ground also keep the planets in their orbits" and then go on to make whatever point you want. It isn't necessary to quote Newton's exact words.

In practice, I often find that quoting someone else's exact words makes the text more difficult to read. Usually the original source includes the points I want to make mixed in with other points not relevant at the moment, and I have to leave out chunks with ellipses. Or I have to re-state what the original source said in my own words to make the point clear anyway.

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The best way to avoid plagiarising content is by avoiding plagiarising content.

Now, as obvious as that probably sounds when stated like that, bear with me for a second before you hit the downvote arrow. This question really boils down to, do your texts really need to include the actual text of the cited work incorporated verbatim into your own text?

My experience is that a lot of the time, they don't, and it can even be a distraction from the original point that you are trying to make. Assuming that the reader is familiar with the subject matter further exacerbates this: by incorporating text that describes something the reader is already familiar with, you detract from what you are trying to add on top of that.

Thus, verbatim incorporation of the referenced text is at best superfluous, and more likely actively to the detriment of the purpose of the text that you are writing.

People who are reading a text on a "very technical" matter often have some level of background knowledge of the subject matter. The major exception to this is if what you are writing is specifically intended as an introduction to the subject, but in that case, the full and verbatim text of the referenced work is likely to do more harm than good in terms of helping the reader understand the subject matter. In neither case is incorporating the text of the reference verbatim to anyone's advantage (unless you are seeking to strictly increase your word count, but in that case, Lorem Ipsum is quicker).

As a somewhat contrived and almost certainly exaggerated example, I could incorporate the text of Wikipedia's article on plagiarism into this answer. It probably would probably be relevant, I wouldn't be violating any license terms as long as I give proper attribution (both the "subscriber content" of Stack Exchange, and the content of Wikipedia, is licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0), but it also almost certainly would not enhance your understanding of the answer. That last would make copying the Wikipedia article into this answer a poor choice. To a first order approximation, the text of the Wikipedia article is about ten printed pages; this answer would likely be completely buried in that mass of text (illustrating how verbatim incorporation of references can be outright detrimental).

If you feel your audience really need to have the text of the reference provided to them, and the license for the referenced article allows verbatim redistribution, consider attaching the referenced article as an appendix, clearly stating where it's from, who it's by, and any other relevant details (check the specific license for details). However, if the reference itself (as opposed to the referenced work) is any good, chances are you won't need to, because those who want to read the referenced work will be able to get to it and others can just go on with what they want to do.

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