11.5 Plagiarism: A Brief Introduction
Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel
Plagiarism is something that many people understand to be a bad thing, but few people truly understand. Plagiarism can be intentional (such as copying and pasting large chunks of a website into your paper), or it can be unintentional (such as a weak paraphrase or a lack of reference to authors or sources). But plagiarism is plagiarism, whether it is intentional or not, and it is a serious offense in academic writing.
It can be helpful to understand what plagiarism is if you seek to avoid plagiarizing in your own papers. This video offers a thorough explanation of how one might plagiarize if he or she is not carefully integrating sources into an essay.
“10 Types of Plagiarism” by WriteCheckVideos
Following the guidelines for the ethical use of source materials in your papers can help you to avoid plagiarism in your work. Plagiarism is a serious offense and colleges take instances of plagiarism very seriously.
If you are struggling to figure out how to cite a source or how to integrate it into your work while giving your author(s) proper credit, you can
- ask your instructor
- visit your school’s Writing Center
- set up a meeting with your school’s librarian for English for difficult questions
Every school has a plagiarism policy that both defines what plagiarism is and outlines the consequences that will arise in the event that a student is caught plagiarizing.
Attribution: “Plagiarism” from A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Adapted for brevity and clarity and to remove location-specific details.
