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The Silent Harm of Plagiarism Essay

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What comes to one’s mind when we think about plagiarism, many people may think of theft or the act of stealing intellectual property. According to Webster-Merriams’ dictionary, plagiarism is “the act stealing and passing off (the ideas and words of others) as one’s own” (Webster-Merriam). Webster seems to have left a little something out. Plagiarism is not just the act of stealing one’s work. It is also the result of ethical deterioration of academic integrity. In the discussion of plagiarism, a controversial issue is whether plagiarism is taken seriously enough and whether the consequences are severe enough. Many people assume the obvious — that the consequences of plagiarism result in a letter grade deduction on a paper or a complete…show more content…
In the data collected by Hard, a drastic 60.6 percent of students had copied sentences, phrases, paragraphs, tables, figures, or data directly or in slight modification of a book, article, or other academic sources without giving proper acknowledgment to the author (Hard 1069). This statistically illustrates that plagiarizing has become acceptable among most young adults. In sum, the main issues are the deteriorated integrity of the student when plagiarism occurs and degenerated ethics that happen to lessen one’s morals. The standard views toward plagiarism are obviously seen to carry a negative stigma. Not too many people view plagiarism as a proud action. Why is it that plagiarism now a days is somewhat socially acceptable, but still in our academic culture viewed as cheating and consequently unethical? The Internet is the main breeding ground for plagiarism and the wonderful characteristics of the Internet makes plagiarism a lot easier. Ultimately, what is at stake here is that one will plagiarize from the pressure of achievement and, sadly, the detrimental retribution is the decline of moral philosophy. According to Dordoy 2002 survey, fifty-nine percent of students plagiarized because they want to get a better grade. Conversely fifty-four percent plagiarized because of laziness (Hart 91). The risk of plagiarizing is drastically raised when the consequences
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