Plagiarism

Despite the fact that it is easier than ever for teachers to catch plagiarists, some few students continue to try to use the words and ideas of others as if they conceived them.  Plagiarism is as simple as that.  A plagiarist is a "thought-thief" attempting to steal the work of another person's mind and passing it off as his or her own.  Believe that your teacher and the Department of English are doing everything they can to identify and punish plagiarists including keeping student work in an archive, searching the Internet, and subscribing to an Internet service which identifies plagiarized material from a huge database.

Plagiarism can be either intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious.  In any case, whether intended or not, the use of another's ideas and words as if they are your own is considered plagiarism.  Your teacher believes that most plagiarism is unintentional, but that simply shows that the student has not learned the lesson taught.  It is the responsibility of the student to learn how to avoid the problem. 

Three simple techniques can help avoid the appearance and fact of plagiarism:

• If you quote someone, use quote marks around the words which you are borrowing from another writer.
• If you paraphrase or summarize a passage from a book or the ideas of another person, recognize the source by naming the person who thought out the idea and the publication or context in which they discussed it.  It is your responsibility to do this even if you do not use a single quoted word from the original.
• Put an in-text citation after paraphrasing, summarizing, or quoting an idea acquired from another writer.

The class policy follows the University policy, to wit:

• A first offence will fail an assignment.
• The second offence will fail the student from the class.

A record of all student plagiarism is kept in the Dean of Student Affairs Office.  All teachers finding plagiarism report to this University office.

• A third offence from the same student and reported to the Dean of Student Affairs Office can result in expulsion from the University.

Click here for a web site that can help with this problem.