ECC Statement of Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the presentation of another person’s written words or ideas as one’s own. Students are guilty of plagiarism if they submit as their own words:

  • Part or all of a written assignment copied from another person’s manuscript or notes.
  • Part or all of an assignment copied or paraphrased from a source, such as a book, magazine, pamphlet, or electronic document, without giving proper documentation.
  • The sequence of ideas, arrangement of material, pattern or thought of someone else, even though expressed in the student’s own words; plagiarism occurs when such a sequence of ideas is transferred from a source to a paper without processes of digestion, integration, and reorganization in the writer’s mind and without acknowledgment in the paper.

Students are guilty of being accomplices to plagiarism if they:

  • Allow their papers, in outline or finished form, to be copied and submitted as the work of another.
  • Prepare a written assignment for another student and allow it to be submitted as that student’s work.

At its worst, it is deliberate dishonesty, as in the case of copying work from a book or article and presenting it as one’s own. Such a blatant, deliberate act amounts to academic theft and is a serious offense within the college community. The English Department recommends that a student guilty of deliberate plagiarism will receive an automatic grade of “E” for the course.

Another kind of plagiarism can be the result of ignorance of the proper documentation and citation rules. This kind of plagiarism presents the words or ideas of other persons or writers without proper quotation marks, documentation, acknowledgment, or citation of the source. For example, all words copied from another source must always be placed in quotation marks and correctly documented by author and page number. Failure to do so is a form of plagiarism. Also, information which is not “common knowledge” -- that is, broadly known to most high school graduates -- must be documented by author and page. The English Department recommends that a student guilty of this type of plagiarism receive an “E” on the assignment in question.