Plagiarism
| A good piece of academic writing is based on research into a variety of sources. However, it is important to use those sources in the right way. In particular, we should never make it appear that someone else's work is our own. This is plagiarism. If you are not sure how to avoid plagiarism, please work through the following examples. |
Here is a passage from a text book:
After the economic and religious unrest of the middle Tudor period followed the golden age of England. Golden ages are not all of gold, and they never last long. But Shakespeare chanced upon the best time and country in which to live, in order to exercise with least distraction and most encouragement the highest faculties of man. The forest, the field and the city were there in perfection, and all three are needed to perfect the poet.
Now look at these extracts from students' papers. Which one(s), in
your opinion, can be accepted as being truly the student's own work?
There are TWO OTHER THINGS which are also a form of plagiarism. One is translating from a Japanese source. This is, of course, just as much a form of copying as copying from an English source; you are not writing your own paper in your own words, which is the basic object. See the section on translation HERE.
The other big mistake is to SUMMARISE your paper from other sources. A
paper which gets all of the information for one paragraph from the same
chapter of one book is basically presenting someone else's ideas in
a shortened form. Again, this is a form of plagiarism. Remember, you
have to give a reference to show where all the information came from
(see HERE for details). If it all comes from the
same chapter of a book, or the same website, it is obvious that you
have just summarised someone else's work, and you haven't really
researched the topic for yourself. For more details on the subject of
summarising, click HERE.
Plagiarism in spoken presentations
This is a bit tricky, because there isn't a convenient
way to give references. However, the same basic rule still applies; we
should never try to give the listener the impression that someone
else's words are our words. If we are going to read a quote we should
make it clear that it is a quote (usually it is enough just to give the
author's name), and we should keep such quotes short (no more than
15-20% of the total paper).
To study the right way of researching and
writing a paper or spoken presentation in more detail, go to the web
pages on Paraphrasing, Summarising and Quoting
and Notes, References and Bibliography.
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