by Cody Hodge

Created on: November 09, 2008   Last Updated: January 05, 2010

Plagiarism, or the theft of written intellectual property, is a major problem. While it has been a problem for as long as people have been writing, and as long as people have been quoting others, it has become an even bigger problem in this day and age of the Internet. Anybody can go to Google and type in any particular topic, and out comes a million and one different websites with quotes and information.

The biggest problem comes form the fact that since there are so many different sources of information out there, it can be hard to go back and detect the source of the information. While technically this is on the student to be able to cite the work sufficiently so that the teacher can find the source without issue, most teachers simply do not take the time to go back and actually check out what the source is of a quote. Also, if a student is a good writer, a quote that is taken from another author could very well sound like something that the student came up with on his own, and the teacher may not even notice.

The easiest way to get around this if you are a student is to quote anytime there is doubt as to whether or not the source is a common source (defined as anything that can be found in three or more sources) or something that would need to be credited to a specific author. Quoting is at least an acknowledgement that the lines being typed don't belong to you and that you are at least giving credit to the outside source.

The most commonly used source that I have seen teachers use in a service called Turnitin, which compares what the student has written and will compare it to everything else that has ever been written that is in its database. Unfortunately, the database is a little too sensitive and will compare everything word for word, instead of taking context into consideration. For example, you could write, and I quote, wink wink "The little cat was in the closet, and it was sitting next to an old hat of mine." Turnitin though might just catch that it has the words cat, in, the, and hat, and all of sudden you may be in danger of ripping off Dr. Seuss.

To prevent plagiarism, simply quote whenever you are in doubt. At worst you could be called out for a poor quote, but you can't be blamed for plagiarism, and at least the teacher can at least try to work with the student to educate him on how to go about properly quoting sources. This will go a long way toward solving the plagiarism crisis, and will give teachers a good way to educate about crediting of sources, while not having to denounce students as cheaters, especially when so many don't really mean to cheat in the first place.

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