What is plagiarism?
“Plagiarism” means using the words or ideas of another without giving appropriate credit. Even if the student paraphrases the ideas in his/her own words, the source must be cited. If exact words are used, the student must put the words in quotation marks and cite the source. Students are responsible for knowing what plagiarism is and avoiding it. Be particularly careful about copying and pasting information from the Internet – materials used from Internet sources must be quoted and cited just like information from other sources. Students must also be aware that copying or adapting pictures, charts, computer programs or code, music, or data without citing sources and indicating that the material has been copied or adapted is plagiarism. It may also be copyright infringement.
The answer to this question may seem simple. Plagiarism is most simply using another’s work without giving credit. Even though it seems simple enough there are always differences of opinion as to whether a work was plagiarized. The following site, Is it Plagiarism?,(http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/isit.html) details an incident that occurred in December 1999. A parent sent a message to Doug Johnson about plagiarism. He posted the question to LM_NET. He asked teachers how he might respond to the letter he received from the parent. He posted the original letter and all of the responses on this Website The of teacher responses clearly shows that even something as simple as the definition of plagiarism will not be interpreted the same way by any two teachers. Avoiding Plagiarism, retrieved from the World Wide Web, August 2, 2002, http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.
Plagiarism is presenting written work that contains sentences, paragraphs or longer sections from published work without acknowledgement. In other cases, students reproduce portions of the work of another student and present it as their own. Plagiarism also occurs when a student borrows, buys or obtains another person’s work and submits it as his or her own work. Furthermore, using the structure of another’s argument is also a form of plagiarism, even if the wording is changed. Plagiarism is not just the use of someone else’s words, but also someone else’s ideas or interpretations, without due acknowledgement. The History Department encourages students to think for themselves. In assessing your work, we look for evidence of your understanding and capacity for independent thought, so we are always disappointed to discover plagiarism. Our disappointment is only mitigated by the delight of successful detection: academics have very sensitive antennae and there are many clues that will swif
Plagiarism is when you use somebody else’s words but do not give them credit. When you use any text from a document written by somebody else, you must not only use a citation, but you must also write the statements in your own words. This is called paraphrasing. Other acceptable methods include placing the copied materials in quotations or a block quote.A block quote is an indented section of text. It is used to indicate that a larger section of text has been copied from another source. Both quotations and block quotes require citations to indicate the source of the material. A block quote is generally appropriate when more than 100 words or eight lines of text have been used from the source material.
