The Criticism And Definition Of Plagiarism

Plagiarism and Documentation Paper
Have you ever had a really good joke that makes the whole room erupt with laughter? Now, has anyone ever stolen your joke? Maybe the crowd as a whole didn’t hear it, but one individual did. That individual repeats the joke, and the crowd hears it and erupts with laughter. It always sucks when that happens because it was your joke, but no one knew that. You should be the one getting credit for their moment of laughter. Imagine the same situation but with a career in writing. A professional author does not want one of their published ideas stolen by another author. Credit should be given where credit is due. Plagiarism is not something that should be taken lightly. The definition of plagiarism, reasons for documentation,

Why is plagiarism so frowned upon? “What Parents need to know about Plagiarism” has a great metaphor explaining why plagiarism is wrong. It’s not acceptable to steal candy from a store. It’s illegal just like it’s illegal to steal someone’s ideas. This article prompted a question similar to this: Would the author care or even notice if someone took a few ideas from their article or website and used it in a high school paper? The answer is most likely no, but that doesn’t mean we steal candy when the owner isn’t looking. It is still wrong. The number one reason for documentation is because copyright infringement is illegal. A person’s original ideas must be cited and documented because everyone has rights to their own words according to the law. Because original words are intellectual property, people must cite words that aren’t their own according to “What is Plagiarism”. To emphasize the importance of citing your sources, there was one instance where an author plagiarized himself. In the article, “Plagiarism, as common as it is these days, remains reprehensible”, Jim Carnett, the author, was very mad when he was accused of copyrighting. He then realized that he was being accused of plagiarizing some of his previous public work. It never crossed his mind that he must quote himself. As crazy as it may sound, it is a necessity to quote from every source you

With text citations, MLA uses the author’s last name and page number while APA uses the publication date as well. APA style is used for science writing; therefore, the publication date is important to add. MLA and APA formatting may be different, but they have the same common goal. That goal is to cite the sources properly by using in-text citations, which leads the reader to the last page of the paper which is “Works Cited” for MLA papers and “References” for APA papers. APA style is generally used for social sciences, education, psychology, and sociology while MLA style is used for Humanities, English, Philosophy, and History according to Dolsy Smith’s “Citation Style Guides”. The most commonly used citation in high school is the MLA8. According to Michael Greer (a lecturer at the University of Arkansas), the handbook is “streamlined and flexible” and a lot shorter than MLA7 ("Streamlining Citations”).
In conclusion, plagiarism is the uncredited use (both intentional and unintentional) of somebody else’s words or ideas,” according to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab in the article “What Parents need to know about Plagiarism”. The reasons of documentation explain that one can be taken to court for not following the law. However, plagiarism can easily be stopped by correctly using MLA or APA formatting styles. Although a writer may