What do I need to know about plagiarism?

What is the definition of plagiarism?

Definition according to The New York Public Library Kid's Guide to Research by Deborah Heiligman page 26, "When you use the words exactly as they are written in a book and don't put that section in quotation marks, you're copying someone else's work. That is called plagiarism, and it's against the law."

Lisa Hinchcliffe on her web page, Cut-and-Paste Plagiarism: Preventing, Detecting and Tracking Online Plagiarism talks about other kinds of plagiarism as follows:

 " In 'Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism' Stephen Wilhoit lists the following types of plagiarism:

• Buying a paper from a research service or term paper mill.
• Turning in another student's work without that student's knowledge.
• Turning in a paper a peer has written for the student.
• Copying a paper from a source text without proper acknowledgment.
• Copying materials from a source text, supplying proper documentation, but leaving out quotation marks.
• Paraphrasing materials from a source text without appropriate documentation.

The Internet has made simple an additional type of plagiarism:

• Turning in a paper from a 'free term paper' website."

Why shouldn't I plagiarize?

1) It is against the law. Read about copyright and penalties.

2) You are stealing someone else's creativity. If writers knew that everything created by them could be copied and used by others, would anyone want to have creative and fresh ideas to share? Eventually, creativity would die.

3) The purpose of collecting information is to create your own thoughts and ideas around the information you have read and taken notes over. If you copy someone else's words, you are not forming your own thoughts and creative style.

What if I like the exact words a writer used in a book or other source?

Put it in quotations and give credit to the writer and the source. This can be done in a couple of different ways.

1) Put the bibliographical information in the sentence:

The definition of plagiarism according to The New York Public Library Kid's Guide to Research by Deborah Heiligman, 1998, page 26, is "When you use the words exactly as they are written in a book and don't put that section in quotation marks, you're copying someone else's work. That is called plagiarism, and it's against the law."

2) Put the bibliographical information in parenthesis:

"When you use the words exactly as they are written in a book and don't put that section in quotation marks, you're copying someone else's work. That is called plagiarism, and it's against the law." (Heiligman, Deborah. The New York Public Library Kid's Guide to Research. 1998. P. 26.)

In both examples, you must include the source in your bibliography.