Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else’s intellectual property – be it music, writing, a movie, or anything else, and passing it off as your own work. In some cases, it is outright theft, in others its called “borrowing” or “cut and paste” but it is still plagiarism if you do not give credit to the person who did the work in the first place. This occurs when you copy off someone else‘s paper, when you copy someone else’s ideas or words and do not cite the place where you got the information.

Three common examples of plagiarism are these:

Copying someone else’s words and taking them as your own by failing to include quotation marks. A paper about Huckleberry Finn, when plagiarized, might include a statement straight from the text of the book:

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

Without quotations and a citation, it is passing off someone else’s words as your own. However if you were to do it correctly:

“YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.” (Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Twa2Huc.sgm&images=images/
modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1. Accessed 11/23/09.)

This is something students are especially tempted to do, since there is often so much work to do and the amount of time seems to be so little that they justify it with a simple “it won’t hurt if I do it a little bit.”

Cutting and pasting from a website and hoping you will not be caught. After all, the web is a big place, no way any professor could look at all the web pages on a topic and find what I used, right?

The study of Classics—of Greece and Rome—can offer us moral lessons as well as a superb grounding in art, literature, history, and language. In our present crisis after September 11, it also offers practical guidance—and the absence of familiarity with the foundations of Western culture in part may explain many of the disturbing reactions to the war that we have seen on American campuses.

No teacher would realize I had not written that, right? OK, I admit, I don’t often use those words, but the professors here don’t know that, do they?

“The study of Classics—of Greece and Rome—can offer us moral lessons as well as a superb grounding in art, literature, history, and language. In our present crisis after September 11, it also offers practical guidance—and the absence of familiarity with the foundations of Western culture in part may explain many of the disturbing reactions to the war that we have seen on American campuses.” (Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. Hanson, Victor Davis. “Classics and War.” Adapted from a lecture at Hillsdale College. 11/11/01. Accessed 11/23/09.)

Copying the ideas so much that its not easily distinguished from the original text. This is something that students like to call “rewriting” but often they do not “rewrite” enough. A science teacher would probably LOVE to see me turn in a paper that says:

One way we see “junk science” is the myth of “fat free foods,” something invented by the food industry. These foods can contain monoglycerides and diglycerides but not triglycerides. This definition makes no sense because the body metabolizes mono-, di-, and triglycerides in the same way. So unknowing consumers take the “fat free” label and use it to eat all they want, while Americans get increasingly obese.

Unless they also realized that the original statement looked like this:

“An example of “junk science” I like to use with my students is the myth of “fat-free foods” invented by the food industry with the help of federal regulators. By regulatory definition, these foods may contain monoglycerides and diglycerides, but not triglycerides. From the point of view of solid science, this definition makes no practical sense, given that the body metabolizes mono-, di- and triglycerides in essentially the same way. Meanwhile unwary consumers take the “fat-free” label as a license to eat these foods to excess, and Americans are more obese now than ever before.” (Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. Baron, Lee Ann. “The Influence of Junk Science.” http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/
issue.asp?year=2001&month=02. 9/14/2000. Accessed 11/23/09.)

Avoiding plagiarism is simple, and there are multiple steps to prevent it, but the easiest are:

o  Plan ahead for assignments. Start to do the work soon enough so that you have time to complete it and are not tempted to cheat.

o  Make careful notes on index cards of not only the quotes and information you would like to use, but also the citation so you do not make an error in citing someone properly in the text of your paper when you do use their writing.

o  No matter how nice someone else’s paper sounds, use your own words.

o  If you do not understand something, including it in the paper is not going to make you look like you do.

o  Do not assume every student is cheating and you need to just to keep up your grades. (Plagiarism.org. http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_educational_
tips_on_plagiarism_prevention.html. Accessed 11/23/09.)

Plagiarism is theft. Just as musicians regularly go to court over the ideas they express in their music and some artists will sue if someone does something similar to their work, those who write will do the same if you are attempting to steal their work as your own. If you wrote a book and were making money off its sales, would you want someone to turn around, put a new cover on your words, and sell it under a different title? That is what plagiarism is doing, in no uncertain terms.

In addition, the effect it can have on a student caught doing it is vast. Depending on your schools rules, you could be expelled or dropped for theft of another’s intellectual ideas. Students at some universities and the military academies are regularly dismissed for cheating, whether on tests, copying homework, or plagiarizing someone else’s ideas. Some schools have an honor code so strict that instructors do not even find it hard to give a student a test to complete in the dorm overnight because the students have sworn not to cheat and they will not.