Plagiarism is a serious crime. This doesn’t apply only to students who cheat on their assignment and academic paper writing nor to writers who copied other authors or writers’ written works or ideas. Plagiarism on the World Wide Web is also popular among bloggers, internet marketers, so on and so forth. Since the Internet or the web is the main source of information, many people, particularly the students, used this tool to perform plagiarism. Some people didn’t know that they have committed such crime but the harsh reality is that whether you intended to or not to plagiarize other people’s work you will still held responsible for it.
If you have heard or read about the plagiarism case of Sen. Rand Paul, this is one good example of why we should not practice plagiarism. According to some reports, he has been accused of multiple counts of plagiarism in his speeches and even in his published book. See how critical this issue was? Even if you are a politician, a student, a writer by profession, etc. or whatever your position is, once you got caught plagiarizing other people’s work or ideas you have to face the consequences. If you want the people or your readers to trust you and keep your integrity, you must never ever attempt plagiarizing other’s work. Once the idea or an opinion or even the exact words said or written by a person is copied, mimic, or used without the permission of the main source, the one who used or stole it is already considered as a “plagiarism criminal”. Meaning, you have committed a crime and there are punishment for such bad action.
According to UNC Instrument of Student Judicial Governance, Section II.B.1., plagiarism is defined as “the deliberate or reckless representation of another’s words, thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, whether graded or otherwise.” The reason academic institutions are very strict when it comes to the academic integrity and honesty of the students is because they wanted them to understand how serious this case is. This is prohibited in school so students won’t develop a bad habit of doing it in their future profession or career. Being tagged as a dishonest person or cheater is already shameful. Just imagine how awful it will be if you hold a very high position in the government and you are charged with plagiarism. Do you think the people will still trust you? I guess not. No one will believe you because you have committed a very serious offense.
As a wannabe blogger or an aspiring paper writer, you must learn and understand well what plagiarism truly is and how can you detect if a particular writing or blog post is a plagiarized work. Once you knew these things you can able to avoid it and you can easily notice if you’ve committed it unintentionally unto your work.
In identifying plagiarism work, you must start from studying the basics of it. You commit plagiarism if:
- You use another person’s ideas, opinions, or theories without permission or if you didn’t cite the main source of the information.
- You paraphrase or just rearrange another person’s spoken or written word and fail to give credits to the source of the information.
- You use facts, case studies, reports, statistics, exact words, graphics from websites, drawings, video, music, etc., or any other type of information that is not generally known information.
- You copied or get quotations from another person’s spoken or written word.
To avoid committing plagiarism you need to have an in-depth understanding and knowledge about the principles for conducting research responsibly. These information is useful for any type of writing whether it is for school or work purposes. It is better that you will have a glimpse of the principles and apply it to your writing projects and blog posts. Following a systematic research method is a must. Before you can write a good content you need to gather or collect information first that you will include on the body of your article or study. As you collect information you must follow the correct citation guidelines. There is no required citation format for blogging unlike in academic paper writing but citing the resources that you used for your content is very important. If you want to learn how to cite electronic sources, this can be helpful to you, Electronic Sources (Web Publications).
As a blogger or writer, you must always be careful in constructing your custom writing. Take your time do not rush things. Read as many resource materials as possible and do not forget to keep track of your resources. Remember, if you are using electronic sources you have to update the URL’s as you work so you must check the website where you got the information. Be sure that as you publish your written work or content on the web, everything are cited correctly because you will be held responsible for any misuse of sources.
Writing original content is the key to avoid plagiarism. Learn how to paraphrase, use quotations properly, and other principles on how to avoid plagiarism. Remember there are already available tools online that can detect if a certain content is plagiarized or original. So don’t be too sure that you will not get caught if you steal other people’s information and ideas on the web or in other resources.
Suggestion. Try free plagiarism checker for students on Domypapers.com.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Howard Dickins
