What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is something to be taken seriously. If you do not heed it, it could land you in all sorts of difficulties. And the first step in the effort to avoid plagiarism is to understand what it means. Let us examine the definition of plagiarism. According to the University of Colorado, Boulder, Glossary of Library Terms plagiarism is "The act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation".

Borrowed Words

So to begin with, plagiarism is to use someone else's words and try and pass them off as your own. Just because someone else has expressed a thought far more lucidly and intelligently is no excuse to use it. Does this mean that you are forbidden to use the language of others especially in academic work? This is not so. Borrowing the language of others especially in academic writing is acceptable provided due credit is given to the authors whose work has been reproduced. However there is a limit to the extent to which you can use the language of others; because if this is taken to the extreme, an academic paper could appear like the copy of someone else's work.

Borrowed Ideas

Often academic research involves the use of the ideas of others to substantiate an original thought or argument. After all, the entire progress that human beings have made is by adding original ideas to the ideas of others. This in itself does not amount to plagiarism. But you would be guilty of plagiarism if you try to pass off someone else's ideas as your own. The one sure way of avoiding this situation is to correctly reference borrowed ideas through the use of some citation format.

Citation Formats

There are several forms of citation that you can use to help you avoid plagiarism. The more popular of the citation formats are Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Turabian, and the Harvard and Chicago formats. While some citation formats are used generally, some like APA have special usage. However the common thread between them all is that they help you to cite referred sources with sufficient clarity.

Plagiarism Checkers

However it is possible that in spite of your best effort there could be some inadvertent plagiarism. To guard against such unintentional plagiarism, it is best you use a plagiarism checker. There are several plagiarism checkers. Many of them are available on the internet and at no cost at all. What these plagiarism checkers do is to check a paper with millions of pages of academic work and other writings to see if there are matches.

Conclusion

Avoiding plagiarism should be born in mind by all students. The purpose of all academic papers is to find out the amount of research and analysis you have done and the extent to which you have applied your own thinking to a subject. Plagiarism warning is not without reason. Many students find that the easiest way out for a term paper is to put together the works of others. Plagiarism warning is to be taken seriously. Copying the language and ideas of others is easily detectable using a plagiarism checker. And the consequences of plagiarism could be quite severe.