The biggest misconceptions about plagiarism

Students should always be careful to avoid plagiarism when writing essays and final papers. There are serious academic consequences for students caught plagiarizing even part of their final work; most will automatically receive a failing grade and, in many cases, the student will be expelled from school altogether.

The reason teachers, professors, and school administrators treat plagiarism so seriously is that plagiarism is seen as a form of cheating. By copying someone else’s words or ideas without citing the source, you are not only not giving proper credit to the author, but you are passing off the work as your own. You falsely state to the reader of your essay (for example, your teacher) that you came up with the words and ideas yourself. This is no different than copying a classmate’s test answer and pretending that you came up with the answer yourself.

Actively remembering to cite your sources of information and recognizing the consequences of not doing so will help prevent deliberate plagiarism. However, even well-meaning students can get into trouble if they don’t understand what constitutes plagiarism and what doesn’t.

The biggest misconception about plagiarism is that you only need to cite a source when you have directly copied words from that source, for example if you copied a sentence word for word from a book in your final paper. These students mistakenly think that if you change the words of the sentence or put the author’s ideas in your own words, it is not necessary to cite the source. This is not true!

Students must provide a citation each time information from another source is used in their essay, even if the original words were changed. Plagiarism counts not only when you borrow other people’s words, but also when you borrow their thoughts or ideas. Therefore, paraphrasing is not a substitute for quotation. Nor is it summarizing. The only time you can use information without attribution or credit is when the information is considered common knowledge, something that is generally accepted as fact or can easily be found in reference materials.

Here are some other myths about plagiarism:

Plagiarism only counts if most of the research work was plagiarized. FALSE: Even if only one sentence or sentence was copied in the essay without attribution, it is still considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is easy to get away with because it is so difficult to detect and prove.

FALSE: Not only are teachers and professors experts on their subject and therefore likely familiar with the source you are plagiarizing, but educators are increasingly using Internet tools that can automatically detect even minor cases of plagiarism.

Remembering these misconceptions will help you avoid accidental plagiarism in your next essay or final paper.