25 Astonishing Facts You Should Know About Plagiarism

If you are reading this, you are probably trying your best to maintain
academic integrity and follow the academic rules that strictly curb
plagiarism. Fortunately, you have landed on a right resource that will steer
you clear of plagiarism. It is true that that you need to devote quite a bit of
energy to exclude the possibility of plagiarism in your academic text.
Reading this resource will make your task slightly easier and enable you to
dodge the pitfalls of plagiarism. Here we have gathered certain interesting
and must-know facts related to plagiarism so that you can learn about the
preventative measures. Read on to know how you can avoid plagiarism in
your assignments and coursework.

25 basic, statistical and conceptual facts about plagiarism

While writing, you must give credit wherever you use information, facts or
data from the sources you found, unless it is common knowledge. You
already know this part or have been told by your senior or instructors many
times. But we bet you were not aware of the following facts about plagiarism.

A. Basic
1. Text with references also accounts for plagiarism. Yes, if the
ideas are included from another source and references are present,
but the text is a direct quote from that source without quotation mark,
the references alone do not suspend the possibility of plagiarism. You
should have a quotation mark to signal that the ideas were borrowed.
2. The urge to avoid plagiarism teaches you to present your
ideas better. When you refer to one source, you start to think that
the writer has already said so much on the topic that you should just
paraphrase its words. And you eventually fall into the trap of
plagiarism. But when you seek information from different sources, you
get more unique ways to present YOUR ideas instead of that of the
writers.
3. Using other peoples ideas does not invite plagiarism if you
understand ones idea well enough and explain it in your own words.
You can further use it in your own thought. This is how you should
research over your assignment topic and gather sources.
4. Common English phrases do not account for plagiarism. Some
English phrases are so common that they will appear in the writing of
different people. Plagiarism only arises when a string of work or a
thought long enough to reflect ones personality is used.
5. To avoid plagiarism, you dont have to find ideas that no one
has ever thought of. You are also not required to give references for
ideas and facts that everyone is aware of. Plagiarism problem arises
when your presented idea is so unusual that it ends up matching the
expression of an author in another text. Your instructor can easily
detect that you have copied it.
6. Unacceptable paraphrasing can lead you to the sin of
committing plagiarism. In your mind, paraphrasing is the most
efficient solution to plagiarism. You may have changed the text, but
the sentence structure and much of the wording match the source.
Besides, your writing is too similar to the source. Then it cannot be
counted as original.
Lets take an example:
An excerpt from an essay of 1995 titled Teaching Mark Twains
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, composed by Dr. Shelly Fisher

Fishkin, faculty member of University of Texas. It is impossible to read

Huckleberry Finn without understanding that Mark Twains awareness
and consciousness is larger than that of any character in the novel,
including Huck. Indeed, the part of the novel that illustrates how Huck
is too innocent and ignorant to understand whats wrong with the
society and whats right about his own transgressive behavior.
Unacceptable Paraphrasing:
It is difficult to read Huck Finn without understanding that the
authors unconsciousness is bigger than any of the books characters,
even Huck. One of the things that make reading so enjoyable is that
Huck remains blind to the ills of the society or to the things that are
good about his rebellious behavior.
7. Connecting words from different sources, although in your
idea, without citing the source is also plagiarism. To make your
writing more vivid, you can refer to different sources and interweave
them together almost word-to-word in your own ideas. But later on, if
you did not feel the need for acknowledging or citing the sources, it
results in a plagiarized material.
B. Conceptual:
8. Theres a marked difference between paraphrasing and
summarizing. Paraphrasing involves reformulating a part of text, a
quote or restating a section of text, a point taken from a discrete
section of the text to reflect the writing style of the author. On the
other hand, a summary involves trimming of a large portion of text,
perhaps even an entire chapter, to key points to make the readers
understand the central idea of the text.
9. A mix of credited and unaccredited quotations also leads to
plagiarism. When you use quotation marks around some of the
works, it is the correct way to treat the words that are copied exactly.
However, if you fail to pay attention to more such words that you have
copied exactly from the source and left them without putting quotation
mark around them, the entire thing is considered as plagiarized.
10.
Plagiarism does not arise when you cite generic
information. But students remain confused when they are asked
what constitutes common or generic knowledge. Here is an example,
the Wikipedia.org article on George Lucas does not include a footnote

citation for his full name (George Walton Lucas, Jr.) and his birthday
(May 14, 1944) because these facts are publicly available even if it is
not something one would know or remember.
11.
Making a quote on your own may result in plagiarism.
Technically it is not plagiarism. However, plagiarism tends to appear
due to lack of creativity. Making up quote or sources is the reflection of
surfeit creativity that also cannot be considered.
12.
Using your own work for the second time can lead to
plagiarism. If you dont want to see yourself going into trouble by
paraphrasing your own words, you better spend time to cite your
sources properly.
13.
Citing sources wrongly can be a form of plagiarism too.
Unfortunately, failing to give the credits to the author includes you
under the act of plagiarism. But policies may vary from class to class.
To ensure the consequences, you need to talk to your instructor.
14.
Information from public domains and sources without
author name also requires citation. When you are using
information from the public domains and/or the work that has no
author name attached to it, you mostly go ignorant about citing those
resources. Dont be. If you are borrowing ideas or using ideas garnered
from the work of someone or somewhere, it should receive attribution,
regardless the author is unknown or the domain is publically used.
15.
Hyperlinking is not a desirable form of citation. You may
have given a thought about using hyperlinks as attribution. But
remember, it can create problems under such circumstances where
hyperlinks get deactivated or erased. In an academic setting, it is
advisable not to use a hyperlink as a form of citation in your writing.
16.
Too much of cited text has to be relevant. Sometimes
students wonder how much cited text they can use in their writing.
Technically the answer depends on the assignment and purpose of the
citations. For example, if you are writing an analysis of a poem, using
the entire poem in your writing wont serve you well. So you have to
use it according to relevance.
C. Statistical:

17.
Students readily confess to plagiarism. A survey on 63,000
US undergraduate and 9,250 graduate conducted by Donald McCabe,
Rutgers University revealed the following facts:
I. 32 percent undergraduates confessed to paraphrasing/copying
few sentences from internet source without citing them.
II.
38 percent students admitted to paraphrasing/copying few
sentences from written source without citing them.
III. 7 percent students reported of copying material almost word-toword from a written source without citing them.
IV.
The same poll revealed that 16.5 percent of them did not regret
it.
18.
Plagiarism is rising at an alarming rate. Most college
presidents (55 percent of them) say that plagiarism in the students
papers has increased over the past 10 years.
19.
Virtual knowledge is leading to increased plagiarism.
Those who have seen the gradual rise of plagiarism, 89 percent of
them comment that computers and internet has had a grave influence
on the rise of plagiarism.
20.
Plagiarism shockers. Among the famous cases of plagiarism,
there are two big examples:
I. US vice-president Joe Biden withdrew his nomination for
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1988 due to the
accusation of committing plagiarism in law school 23 years ago.
II.
Senator Rand Paul had to fight off the accusations of plagiarized
material in several speeches and one of his books while he was
battling for the 2016 Republic Presidential nomination.
21.
Plagiarism no longer carries a stigma in the academic
world. Less social disapproval combined with increased competition
for admissions in colleges and universities and survival in the courses
have made students more willing to do anything it takes to get A.
22.
Though plagiarism is a violation of academic code of
conduct, it is not illegal. Still you must refrain from the act as it can
possibly lead you to civil litigation and substantial penalties.
23.
Copyright act was altered to further define plagiarism. In
1989, certain alterations were made to the legal requirement for
copyright infringement. It stated that original works no longer needed

to bear the symbol to have copyright protection. Hence, the use of

already published work, whether online or in print, amounts to
plagiarism if it is used without permission and citations.
24.
Lack of motivation leads to plagiarism. It is noticed that
when intrinsic motivation drops in students and/or extrinsic motivation
rises, students tend to cheat. (Researched by Middlebury College
psychology professor Augustus Jordan)
25.
Noble initiatives being taken to keep plagiarism at bay.
University of California, San Diego, has taken a noble step to avoid
plagiarism in academic writing by encouraging all freshmen to
complete an online tutorial on academic integrity before they register
for second-semester classes. Professors are also asked to explain the
importance of academic integrity in their syllabi and to conduct a
discussion in class during the first week to explain the behaviors of
students that constitute cheating in their courses.
Saying no to plagiarism can be tough when you have the pressure of
obtaining good grades and are perplexed about the deadline. But there are
preventative actions that you can practice while writing. When you are not
expecting plagiarism, thats when it strikes most. So you have to be
prepared.

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