What is plagiarism
Plagiarism is using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism is a type of intellectual theft. It can take many forms, from deliberate cheating to accidentally copying from a source without acknowledgement.
Whenever you use the words or ideas of another person in your work, you must acknowledge where they came from.
Common forms of plagiarism
- Downloading an assignment from an online source and submitting it as your own work.
- Buying, stealing or borrowing an assignment and submitting it as your own work.
- Copying a section of a book or an article and submitting it as your own work.
- Quoting from a source 'word for word', without using quotation marks is plagiarism.
- Copying, cutting and pasting text from an electronic source and submitting it as your own work.
- Using the words of someone else and presenting them as your own.
- Using significant ideas from someone else and presenting them as your own.
- Putting someone else's ideas into your own words and not acknowledging the source of the ideas is plagiarism.
- Copying the written expressions of someone else without proper acknowledgement.
- Lifting sentences or paragraphs from someone else, even with proper acknowledgement, gives the impression that the idea or information comes from the source cited, but that the phrasing, the choice of words to express it, is your own contribution.
- Relying too much on other people's material
Avoid repeated use of long quotations. Too many direct quotations (even with quotation marks and with proper acknowledgement) result in your sources speaking for you, meaning your own contribution is minimal. Use your own words more and rely less on quotations.