Writing & Academic Dishonesty

Meghan MacNamara, MFA

PLAGIARISM: It’s an issue of respecting your sources and yourself

Plagiarism:

Literary theft of someone’s words,

thoughts, expressions, images or sounds and presenting them as your own without acknowledging the original

source

Plagiarism comes from the Latin

word “plagiarius” which means

kidnapper or to plunder.

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According to a 2001 survey by

Rutgers University, 1/2

of students surveyed

admitted to some type of plagiarism on

written assignments.

In fact, a New Jersey high

school valedictorian was denied admission

to Harvard University when she plagiarized content in a

newspaper article she wrote.

Intentional plagiarism =

Don’t do any of the following:

• Copy and submit someone else’s work as your own

• Buy or borrow papers• Cut and paste without proper documentation

• Change words here and there, but copy the original sentence structure

• Anything that I missed that would be done with the intent to represent the original work as your own

Unintentional plagiarism

• Usually done because student doesn’t understand how to properly cite.

• Insufficient paraphrasing

• • Poor or inappropriate documentation

Just to confuse

you: some things are considered

common knowledge and don’t need to be cited.

If found in five (5) or more sources, the information is considered common knowledge and does not need to be

cited

Examples:Barack Obama is the 44th President.

Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941.

Pit Bulls are awesome, despite their misrepresentation in the mainstream

media.

What is self-plagiarism, otherwise referred to as “double-dipping” your own

written work?

It is not okay to “double-up.”

Self-plagiarism is using the same (or very near the same) paper for two different

classes without permission from both instructors

to do so.

Avoiding plagiarism is just a step away.

Summarize by boiling things down to basic

concepts. This can mean summing

up an entire paragraph in one sentence by just focusing on the skeleton of the

ideas expressed.

Paraphrase: Express the meaning of a written or spoken passage using your own words, words that are different from the original source

Paraphrase: Express the meaning of a written or spoken passage using your own words, words that are different from the original source

Play with words and phrases.

Reword. Rework.

Get creative.

Devices in the iPod range are primarily digital audio players designed around a central click wheel, although the iPod shuffle has buttons, also.

An iPod is an MP3 player that lets the listener choose and play music by using a touch wheel to make selections. Some versions also have buttons.

Original Passage

Paraphrase

Be clear. • Mark and properly cite quotations• Paraphrase and summarize information from

your sources matter in your own words • Use of own words while taking notes and

organizing paper • Highlight or otherwise mark words or sentence

structure elements that you need to change when compared to the original source

• Cite all information that isn’t common knowledge with in-text, parenthetical citations

• Include a References page • Use author’s name as a tag to give credit

within a sentence

Cite it all!✔Someone else’s spoken or written content (aka, a quotation)✔Facts or ideas not commonly known (all the stuff you had to look up)✔Images, statistics, details, observations, descriptions, eye-witness accounts, and interviews (pretty much everything that didn’t come directly from you, yes?)✔Opinions, arguments, and speculations from sources other than yourself✔Detailed content involving descriptive terms, proper nouns, and names (If you are using someone else’s clever catch phrase, give them props.)