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Plagiarism Definition

Decent Essays

1. I define plagiarism as a form of theft. Passing one person's written thoughts and ideas as your own is a wrongful act that I believe should be punished. Having had experience with plagiarism, I know what the consequences are and why it is so important to avoid it.

2. In my junior year of high school, I had to write an essay about the works of Edgar Allen Poe. This essay was the thing standing between me and Christmas break, so, I wanted to rush through the essay as quickly as possible. Searching on google led me to one website that contained information that I could use. The only problem was that I only used this one website. I basically copied the material and changed a few words for my entire essay. I did cite the source, but I had used so much of this website's material that I was just passing its author's work off as my own. The consequences for plagiarizing were a failed grade on the essay, and I had to speak with a counselor about plagiarizing. This experience taught me why writing assignments should not be rushed and that I should always make sure to not copy any author's material without giving full credit. …show more content…

I am completely sure that I have plagiarized unknowingly in the past. Ever since I plagiarized in high school, I have been careful about giving full credit to sources. However, before that it is very likely that I had a writing assignment where I didn't give credit to an author without knowing it. I remember never using in-text citations because I never understood them completely. Without properly acknowledging that ideas were not my own in the body of my assignments, I was plagiarizing while thinking I was doing nothing wrong. I even had assignments sent back because they did not have any in-text citations. Now that I understand their importance, I use them whenever they are

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