Plagiarism

If you fail to use citations to indicate which ideas you got from someone else, you are effectively claiming those ideas as your own, whether you mean to or not. Stealing an idea is called plagiarism, and it is a serious offense. Most colleges and high schools have very strict policies against plagiarism.

DEFINING PLAGIARISM

When most people think of plagiarism, they imagine turning in borrowed term papers, copying paragraphs out of books or off of the Internet, or reading another student’s work during an exam. While these activities constitute plagiarism, there are other forms of plagiarism as well.

• Even if you do not copy an idea word for word, if the idea is distinctive or unusual, you must cite it.

• If an author invents a term or uses it in a specific way, you must credit that author. Even following the same structure of another person’s argument can be considered plagiarism if the ideas and conclusions are similar.

Many students commit plagiarism and don’t even know they are cheating. When there’s very little time to finish a paper, it’s easy to be careless about indicating where your ideas come from and citing them properly.

COPYING AN ARGUMENT

A passage does not have to quote word for word without citing to qualify as plagiarism. You also are commiting plagiarism if you claim an idea that you’ve taken from another source as an original idea. For example, if the original passage reads,

“Wild contrasts, such as the implicit comparison between the rough, earthy craftsmen and the delicate, graceful fairies, dominate A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck’s capricious spirit, magical fancy, fun-loving humor, and evocative language illustrate many of these contrasts within his own character. Puck could be seen as the paradoxical center of the play.”

The following is plagiarism:

“Puck’s clever way of speaking and sprightly manner illustrate some of the dramatic contrasts that dominate A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including the contrast between the vulgar craftsmen and the dainty fairies.”

The paragraph is careful not to duplicate the exact language of the original, but it still takes the exact same idea and presents it as the author’s own—that Puck’s character itself illustrates the contrasts present in Shakespeare’s play.

COPYING AN IDEA

You must attribute single ideas, as well as entire arguments, to their sources. The statement “By observing the contrasts in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and comparing them to Puck’s role in the play, we find that Puck is in many ways the play’s paradoxical center” plagiarizes the above idea that Puck embodies the contrasts of the play. However, the statement “Although the SparkNote on A Midsummer Night’s Dream argues that Puck is the ‘paradoxical center’ of the play, his character actually undermines the contrasts that the rest of the play creates” is not plagiarism. This statement distinguishes between the author’s original idea and the source’s original idea.

COPYING VERBATIM

It is plagiarism to copy words verbatim. The statement “The rough, earthy craftsmen contrast Puck’s capricious spirit” plagiarizes the SparkNote on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

COPYING INFORMATION

You must cite all actual information that is not widely known. The statement “In 1999,France prosecuted 78 people who were accused of homicide” would be plagiarism if a source were not cited. However, the statement “France does not use a death penalty as punishment” is not plagiarism, for this information is widely known.

DECEPTIVE QUOTING

Taking words or phrases out of context so that they say something different than what they say in the original text constitutes plagiarism. If the original reads, “The movie was so bad that I sunk into extraordinary depths of despair!” citing the source as saying simply “Extraordinary . . . !” is plagiarism.