Plagiarism Explained

Introduction

Plagiarism is an instance where the writer or researcher takes another person’s words, ideas, or statistics and pass them off as his or her own. The researcher can translate a text written by someone else either completely or partially, and if he or she does not acknowledge its source, it constitutes to plagiarism (Hacker & Somers, 2007). Since writers cannot always be original it is entirely acceptable for a writer to present another person’s ideas in his or her work, however, it must be done properly to avoid plagiarism. Many a time, the internet has become a popular source of information for most students’ papers and many questions have sprung up about how to avoid plagiarizing these sources (Smith, 2008). In most cases, the same rules apply as for a printed source when one refer to ideas or quote from a website, he must cite that source. The same rules apply when using visual information from a website similar to quoting information. These rules also apply to other uses of textual or visual information from www sites where it might also be a good idea to obtain permission from the www site’s owner before using the graphics.

Strategies for Avoiding Plagiarism

Writers or researchers when borrowing another person’s words are advised to use such tools as quotation marks in their work and include complete reference such as author’s name, date, pages, as well as internet sources must also be acknowledged. Here, the writer gets an opportunity to incorporate the other writer’s ideas into his work having acknowledged the source by authenticating it by quotes. A writer is also advised not to paraphrase another writer’s words and pass them off as his or her own; instead, quotations must be put in everything that comes directly from the text referred, more so when taking notes. During paraphrasing, a writer should be careful not to use the same words as from the source. He should therefore close examine his literature work to be sure it is not plagiarized otherwise it will be termed a mare plagiarism.   

How to Deliver Plagiarism Free Work

For a writer to present a clean and personal work free from plagiarism, he must acknowledge the use another person’s idea, opinion, or theory any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings, or any pieces of information by quotations. Sometimes it may be a visual or spoken work in an uncommon language or at times, a writer needs to paraphrase it to present it from his or her own understanding (Cvetkovic & Anderson, 2010). Sometimes a writer may need to present facts that can be found in numerous places and are likely to be common or generally known information, he or she needs not to document such facts.

However, he or she must document facts that are not generally known and ideas that interpret facts. Such facts might be identified by a subsection or a small region and putting them across without providing enough reference to trace its source. This gives rise to suspicion that whatever the writer has written is either a replica of another writer or rather a copy-paste plague. Accordingly, The Springfield Township School District in Erdenhim defines plagiarism as “Direct copying of the work of another submitted as the student’s own.” It also states that, “Lack of in-text or in-project documentation that does not check out or match works cited” (Terdy, 1999).

Conclusion

By following the directions provided in this writing, a student can meet one of the goals of this course, which is to learn how to support one’s own thoughts and ideas through incorporating research into his or her own writing. Evidently, when writing, it is vital to differentiate between one’s own words, ideas, and information from the words, ideas, and information of others.