Plagiarism Essay

To plagiarize is “to use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own.” As you can see to have the definition of plagiarism I had to google it and I quoted the definition from an online dictionary. With my own words it will be: plagiarism is a way to steal ideas from others, but this definition has also been used. That is the complexity of plagiarism. On the Harper’s magazine, Jonathan Lethem wrote an article called The Ecstasy of influence.

“Do the research yourself and write it in your own words, adhere to research practices approved in your discipline, follow school guidelines for working with people, resources, and technology, avoid one-sided research that may conceal opposition, present real data and facts and treat source material fairly in your writing” (Vandermey 2007). Aside from the principles of ethics in research, Purdue Owl has a few tips to minimize the risk of plagiarism by following these steps: “In your notes, always mark someone else's words with a big Q, for quote, or use big quotation marks”(Stolley 2014). “Try writing your paraphrase or summary of a text without looking at the original, relying only on your memory and notes” (Stolley 2014). Lastly, try not to quote entire sentences like I did in this last paragraph, only quote necessary material and write the rest in your own words. There is another law called the Fair Use Law where a limitation exists in relation to how many words can be quoted from each source (Stolley

With one’s career having to downgrade in the field of work or preventing employee from climbing higher up the ladder. Understanding plagiarism and the varied types of plagiarism which is paraphrasing, copying verbatim, and copying verbatim with no quotations. Along with knowing what you are citing, the resource in which information is coming from which are magazines, the Web, or a book. How to cite the resource and last what type of citing format is being used MLA, APA, or Chicago are all important aspects in steering away from the crime of plagiarism. Taking all aspects into consideration will create a well written paper with no room for failing

Meriam-Webster defines plagiarism as someone taking a piece of work and calling it their own. On the website www.plagiarism.org, there is a list of examples of plagiarism. According to the website, these examples include, copying words and ideas from someone else without giving that person credit, leaving out the quotation marks from a direct quote, and giving the wrong information about where the sources of a quotation were found.

Ways to avoid plagiarism is by giving credit for words, paraphrases and ideas that come from another persons work. It can also be avoided by putting quotation marks around words that come form a source and then give the source. Journalist can avoid plagiarism by acknowledging material that has been borrowed and giving the readers the information needed to find the source. Another way it can be avoided is by noting an idea that was taken from someone’s work.

The ORI defines plagiarism as theft of one’s work at any stage of your work where credit is not given and allowing the reader to believe that it is only your work. These works can range from ideas and unique methods like grant papers, to copying words straight from a text. (Handa, 2008).

Plagiarism is academic theft, it is extremely important to avoid plagiarism not only for academic purposes but also for legal reasons. It is when someone uses someone else’s ideas and written work within their own written work and without citing them, therefore claiming them as their own ideas. Kirton (2007) states that ‘providing evidence is an important dimension of academic writing’, so when quotations and citations are not used a writer is ‘plagiarizing someone else’s intellectual property’. (Kirton, 2007: 155)

Internet technology has given birth to a new form of plagiarism called "cut and paste plagiarism". As the name suggests, the less-than-honest student sits down to the Internet and in the course of browsing a subject, simply copies segments or entire web articles and pastes them onto his or her document. There are even websites that are geared directly toward the student seeking the easy way out, such as School sucks, other people’s papers and evil house of cheat. These are free, or small fee sites that offer prewritten essays and research papers. One can even get a custom written report over the Internet for a fee. Whatever the reason, or however great the temptation, the punishment one faces if caught are severe.

Plagiarism is, in simple terms stealing someone else’s work without giving credit. It is a crime to commit and if you were to do it in college or even high school, you could lose all credit on the paper or project and, in extreme cases, be taken to court. In the paper, you will hopefully learn more about plagiarism, how to avoid it, and learn some real life scenarios of plagiarism happening. Plagiarism is unacceptable and is something that the student body needs to be informed about.

Plagiarism is a growing problem in universities (Matheson & Starr 2013) and becoming too common in the scientific world (Ober et al. 2012). Hence it is important for students as well as researchers to know how to avoid plagiarism. Before discussing the ways to avoid plagiarism, this paper discusses the definition, the types and reasons for plagiarism.

Plagiarism takes various forms. A student may plagiarize doing something as extreme as purchasing a paper, hiring someone to write a paper or turning in a paper freely provided by a friend. Many students unknowingly commit Plagiarism by failing to properly cite their sources crediting the authors. Still others cite, but plagiarize by copying much too much and writing far, far too little of their own synthesized thoughts and ideas. Students must be careful about copying too much. If a paper is mostly other writers’ material, that can be considered Plagiarism, even if the student credits their sources.

Plagiarism can be found in all aspects of life. Professors and teachers will usually tell students that plagiarism is not tolerated. Bosses will tell their employees that stealing others’ work is prohibited. People will often suffer many consequences for plagiarising. But those large fines and repercussions can all be avoided if documentation is given for the information that was taken. Documentation can simply be including in-text citations and adding in a works cited. However, correctly and accurately citing sources depends on the type of paper. Documentation in a MLA paper will be different than in an APA paper. With this in mind, there are ways plagiarism can be avoided, and it’s important to see the difference between using personal ideas versus outside sources.

In colloquial language plagiarism is the concept of stealing someone’s piece of work or someone’s idea. It is clear that plagiarising is unjust and immoral, however now a days it is becoming more difficult to come up with original ideas as the media allows students to have open access to all information and the producer or author must be very careful to not use somebody else’s work unintentionally and claim it as theirs. It is important to educate students about plagiarism as it can carry major consequences. The concept of plagiarism with reference to policy will be outlined and also the steps helping students and authors to avoid plagiarism in this assignment.

There have been several occasions’ universities expelling students for plagiarism or heard it on the news media about individuals in court over stolen ideas or intellectual property; sister to plagiarism. The rules of plagiarism have changed over the years and have made it difficult for students to write an essay without treading on plagiarism’s rules. How can a student write an essay in his own words without worrying about being accused of plagiarism? I will discuss the “what”, “why”, “when” about plagiarism. Just as there are rules for society, there are rules for writers.

Plagiarism is using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism is a type of intellectual theft. It can take many forms, from deliberate cheating to accidentally copying from a source without acknowledgement.