Plagiarism

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" - TS Eliot

Plagiarism is, as defined by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, is “in an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas or other original (not common-knowledge) without acknowledging its source.” Plagiarism is a nice word for cheating. [1]

Analyzing that sentence, “deliberately” and “without acknowledging its source” are the keywords that cause a lot of confusion in the world of art, specifically more so, the world of academics. Plagiarism is a problem because it is often too broad and confusing term.

First, most students do not realize that they are committing plagiarism when writing. Simply because, there is so many documents already covered on a certain topic, its impossible to know if you are writing a sentence the same way that someone else worded. When someone is writing a paragraph verbatim as another source without properly identifying its author, then they are most likely committing plagiarism and are well aware of the fact their actions.

Second, students do not properly cite their information while writing. Either they do not know how, or they completely ignore it. Most of the time, students do not cite properly intentionally because they feel like they can get away with it, even if they do get caught.

In the pre-internet days, students blamed their confusing “notebooks”, where they allegedly mixed up their own notes with passages recorded elsewhere. [2] In 1969, 58.3% of high school students let someone else copy their work in 1969. [3]

Just in 20 year span, that statistic has jumped from 58.3% to 97.5% to students cheating. A national survey published in Education Week found that...

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...y than someone else. Eventually you will be coping someone else’s work. If you go as far as copying several paragraphs verbatim as someone else's, then it is stealing. Citation should always be used if it’s more than a few sentences. In the academic world, plagiarism should not be tolerated across the board as it is not accepted in the journalism world. If you learn early that it is okay, then you are most likely going to do it the rest of your life.

In conclusion, plagiarism can be a very confusing topic because it is too broad of a term and work is not properly cited. The consequences are not enforced in the academic world as firmly as they are in other areas. Also, the Internet has greatly sped up stealing because it is so easy to obtain information. There are other types of plagiarism than that of the written word; music is a large example of stealing.