Plagiarism: Home

Plagiarism is:

Using another person's words and/or ideas in your work without giving credit to that person.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Plagiarize as:

To steal and use (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own 

Morris, W. (1982). The American Heritage dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

University of Maine System: Section 314 Academic Integrity

Section 314 Academic Integrity, above, goes into detail on what Academic Integrity is all about in the University of Maine System. It covers:

• Responsibilities
• Violations
• Types of Academic Integrity Violations
• Procedures
• Sanctions

What it all boils down to, is if you cheat, and depending on how or how often you cheat, there are many possible consequences, such as :

• Failing an assignment
• Failing a class 
• Being expelled

One way to avoid academic dishonesty, is to learn how to avoid plagiarism. And to avoid plagiarism, you need to know what it is.

All of the following are considered Plagiarism:

1. Turning in someone else's work as your own
   • Example: Jayden buys a research paper from a student in his class. He puts his name on it and turns it in as his.
2. Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving him or her credit
   • Example: Jin finds a research article with two paragraphs that say exactly what she wants to say. She copies the paragraphs directly into her paper and lets her teacher think she wrote them.
3. Failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
   • Example: Jayce writes down what a researcher says in an article but does not put quotation marks around the quote or cite where the quote came from.
4. Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
   • Example: Jada uses a quote properly in her text, but does not provide correct information in her reference for the quote. Now no one can find where she got it, or maybe she made up the quote to give credibility to her paper.
5. Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
   • Example: Jelani found a great paragraph in a journal article. He changed it just enough with a few words to make it look like his.
6. Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not
   • Example: Jet wrote a sentence or two, then quoted a paragraph from an article. She then wrote another sentence, then copied and pasted another paragraph or two into her paper. She continued to do this until most of the article she was using was in her paper, and she wrote only a little bit of the paper. She included a reference list where she cited the article before turning into her instructor.

What is Plagiarism? (n.d.) Retrieved November 20, 2012, from <http://plagiarism.org/citing-sources/whats-a-citation> with some modifications