PLAGIARISM

Definition

Plagiarism is an act of theft committed by a person who is stealing someone else's intellectual property. Plagiarism is an act of dishonesty. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, a writer is misrepresenting someone else's words or ideas as his or her own.

Examples

Intentional plagiarism exists when you list sources that you have not used; when you copy from a source but fail to cite it, thereby misrepresenting the original source's ideas as your own; when you copy material from another student's work without giving that other student credit; when you buy or borrow a whole paper or portions of a paper from another student or from the World Wide Web; when you copy another artist's music or work of art and try to submit it as your own.

Unintentional plagiarism, which is also punishable, may exist when you attempt to paraphrase or summarize a source but copy too much from the source instead of re-writing the ideas in your own words; when you inadvertently fail to include a parenthetical reference to a source, although the source is listed among the citations at the end of the paper; when you fail to put quotation marks around quoted material; when you rely too heavily on external sources, thus expressing few or none of your own ideas.

These examples are not all inclusive of every possible form of plagiarism and should not be considered as such.

Source: College of the Siskiyous Student Handbook, 2006-2007.