Plagiarism: A Very Serious Offense :: Education Teaching

Plagiarism: A Very Serious Offense Plagiarism is a very serious subject to talk about. It doesn’t sound like it is that big of a deal but very serious things can come out of it. Students could lose scholarships and get kicked out of school for something as simple as copying someone else’s work. Students should learn the rules and regulations of the school ,that they are attending, about plagiarism.[1] That’s basically what plagiarism is; copying someone else’s work. The true definition of plagiarism is â€Å"Using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness.†[2] There are many different ways of remedying this problem. One way to fix this situation is to paraphrase and that is to really put the information that one may obtain into his or her own words. This way can be a double-edged sword, so to speak. Putting someone else’s ideas into your own words can be very tricky, because if one follows the original material to closely it is considered plagiarism. Only if the paraphrase correctly says the same thing as the original in the student’s own words is the paraphrase not thought to be plagiarism. Another way to correct plagiarism is to quote and give credit where credit is due. If the student takes someone’s own words and uses them in a paper he or she better put quotation marks around the quote and disclose to whom the quote belonged to. The last thing a student can do to avoid plagiarism is to check over their paraphrasing and quoting to make sure that they haven’t missed anything that may make their paper violate the plagiarism rule. Always cite sources used to gather information and sources used to incorporate graphs, tables, and etc. into the paper. There are many reasons why students choose to plagiarize. These students in general are students that seem to procrastinate or do the easiest thing possible which is to just copy something from someone who has already done their research on the subject.