As I’ve been grading this round of essays, I’m realizing that some students are not as familiar as they should be with what counts as plagiarism. I think that most would agree that, for example, borrowing a friend’s paper and turning it in as your own work would be plagiarism. Likewise, buying or copying a whole paper from a student paper site is something that most would recognize as plagiarism. But smaller incidents count as plagiarism as well, such as:
- Copying sentences or parts of sentences from other sources, no matter what the source may be (student paper sites, Wikipedia, scholarly papers, etc.).
- Forgetting to put quotation marks around a passage that you’re quoting.
- Copying a sentence (or more) from a source and inserting one or two words of your own.
- Copying a sentence (or more) from a source and using the thesaurus to change some of the words.
- Paraphrasing a source without giving credit to its author.
Plagiarism is a serious matter, and even an incident that seems as small as those listed above can cause you to fail the paper, the course, or both. Read page 47 of the current course catalog and pages 38-39 of the Student Handbook for the SanJac policy on plagiarism. As stated in the course syllabus, it is your responsibility to know what counts as plagiarism and to aviod plagiarism in all your assignments.
A good rule of thumb is to know that you must cite (give credit to) any words or ideas that did not come out of your own brain. Your textbooks give instructions for giving proper credit to your sources, and we have discussed this in class as well. Whenever you’re in doubt, please come to me with your writing and your sources so that I can assist you in using your sources appropriately.
Additionally, remember that although student paper sites can be tempting, they are never good resources for your papers, even as background research. Most of these papers are poorly written, and none will be as valuable as a resource written by an expert — or even a brief conversation with the instructor!
Here are some online resources that can help you identify and avoid plagiarism in your work:
- Avoiding Plagiarism (The Owl at Purdue)
- How to Recognize Plagiarism (Indiana Univeristy at Bloomington Dept. of Education)
- Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It (Indiana University at Bloomington)
- Avoiding Plagiarism: Warning Signs and Prevention (Duke University; this site describes policies of its home university, but in general its tips are excellent)
[photo via Transguyjay on flickr, licensed through creative commons ]
