Achievement 3 by @ifecollins: Content Etiquette

Hello everyone.

I take a step further today by taking you through my third achievement which is all about content etiquette and what it entails. Firstly, I would like to show my sincere appreciation to everyone who has supported and engaged my previous posts on this platform. I hope it continues. God bless you all.

Now to the topic for today and the sole reason for this post. I am going to take you on the concept of Plagiarism, its disadvantages because there is no good thing about plagiarizing, how it can be avoided, and also why Steemit has no place for it on its platform.

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Definition of Plagiarism
According to Scribbr:

“Plagiarism is defined as stealing someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. In the context of academic writing, this means quoting someone’s words without quotation marks or paraphrasing an idea without including a proper citation.
Plagiarism is also a relevant concern in other contexts outside of academia. You might be aware of high-profile examples of plagiarism in the worlds of art, politics, and music. It’s not only text that can be plagiarized, but also creative works like music and images.”

The keyword in the above-cited definition that should be noted is “stealing”. So plagiarism connotes stealing someone’s work which is mainly writing or any other original content like music and images.
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Disadvantages of Plagiarism
Plagiarism is quite a serious issue. It is really wrong because it involves stealing another person’s hard work and not giving credit to that person as is so rightly deserved. Receiving credit for work not belonging to us deceives our readers and is absolutely unethical.
A Few disadvantages of plagiarism may include:

1. A destroyed reputation in the professional space.
2. Legal repercussions - This is mainly seen in the intellectual property aspects of law as there are always multiple suits against offenders and if found guilty such offenders are punished to the full extent of the law.
3. Academic consequences such as destroying the student’s reputation among his/her peers, grade reduction, and even total failure.

How to Avoid Plagiarism
The most reliable way of avoiding and for being caught for plagiarism is to always cite your sources. This connotes that you have to make sure your work is accompanied by the right references and in doing this, ensure you make use of quotation marks.

Also, reading widely from multiple materials on the particular topic you want to write will greatly help because when you want to start writing you would have a solid idea and background about what you want to put out. This just basically entails extensive research on the chosen topic. It is that straightforward and it really helps you as a writer.
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It is really important that a platform like Steemit strictly forbids plagiarism and this policy should not be relaxed at all. No one as a writer anywhere would be pleased seeing his/her hard work being ripped off and being paraded else as another person’s own.

Plagiarism is an offence which at all times should be highly discouraged and penalized.

“I have read and understood the Steemit Etiquette on Steemit Community and will do my best to embrace them”