by Patricia Rockwell

Created on: January 16, 2009

Plagiarism is an academic crime. Most college professors penalize students who plagiarize any portion of their written work with a failing grade for the assignment or worse. Understanding plagiarism is simple; any time you use the specific words or ideas from a published source without giving credit to that source, you are plagiarizing. That means that if you find a paragraph in a book, a magazine, or even a page from Wikipedia and add it to your research paper without giving credit to where you got it you are a plagiarizer. Thus, the title of this article is misleading in that plagiarism can involve using sources from Wikipedia (or other texts) and academically honest writing can also involve citations from Wikipedia (or other texts). It doesn't matter where you steal it from-Tiffany's or Walmart. Theft is theft.

Often students think they can avoid being charged with plagiarism by stealing material and then changing or removing a few of the words from the segment in question. This will generally not work. I taught Communication courses at various colleges and universities for over forty years and during that time, I encountered many instances of student attempts at plagiarism. I also encountered a whole array of intriguing excuses for plagiarism too.

What I never understood was why students plagiarize when it is not necessary. Teachers do not mind that students use material from outside published sources. In fact, they expect them to use such sources. All teachers expect is that student writers indicate where they found their material and give credit to the author who wrote it. This is called a citation.

There are several ways to handle citations. You can quote the material directly. If you do, just make certain that you put quotation marks around the segment that you take from the outside source. Another method is to paraphrase. In paraphrasing you say in your own words what the source says. For either of these two methods, however, you must indicate in the text of your paper the name of the author you are citing and the publication date in parentheses immediately following the cited material (if you are following the formatting style of the American Psychological Association). Then, you must provide complete bibliographic information about the source in your list of references at the end of the paper. If you do these things, you will not be accused of plagiarism.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that your teacher will not notice if you plagiarize. Most of us are well versed in how to track down plagiarists and we recognize instances of it when we see it. The most important reason not to plagiarize is that it's so easy to avoid itjust use quotation marks and make sure you cite your sourcewhether it's from Wikipedia or not.

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