Achievement Task 3 by @chidosky98. Task Content Etiquette

Greetings to all steemians! I am highly pleased to present my achievement 3 task which deals on plagiarism.

Plagiarism has to do with presenting another person's work, idea or write up in whole or in part without the intention of giving the originator or the owner of the work the credit he deserves for his work. In this act, the one plagiarising seeks glory to himself from another person's work which he never toiled or laboured to do. He intends to reap from where he never sowed. It is an offence to plagiarise, and the one plagiarising is known as a plagiarist.

Apart from denying the owner of a work the credit he deserves for his work, plagiarism detracts from the credence of the work of a plagiarist. For instance, I remember my final days in school. There was an illustration one of our lecturers then in school gave in his textbook, which took him long time to give us after we paid for it because of some delays by the printing company he awarded the contract to. That was his new textbook edition in our final year.

In one of the chapters of his textbook, he was demonstrating a certain accounting principle with an illustration. He lifted that illustration in his textbook from one textbook by a renowned scholar which I bought from a bookshop two years before that his textbook he sold to us in that our final year, verbatim! He didn't even show that he copied it from somewhere, there was no trace of the source. He just gave us the impression that he over laboured his brain to get that textbook ready with clear illustrations in it for our easy understanding of the that course. He had always advised us not confuse ourselves in his course with multiple textbooks. I didn't know why but later, I discovered something.

One day, I consulted that textbook I bought from a bookshop for a better understanding of a topic in that my lecturer's course. I was shocked to marrow when I came across that same illustration my lecturer used in that his textbook verbatim! Later, I started seeing some other illustrations he used in his textbook there!! To be honest, my respect for that my lecturer reduced right in my heart even though I never insulted him for one day but, I started seeing him as one specialized in copying people's work.

I might be wrong seeing him like that anyway but, that was how I viewed him starting from that day. I even wondered if that was the reason why he would always advise us not confuse ourselves in that course with other textbooks. What do you think would have been my reaction, if he had shown the source of any of those illustrations in his textbook and I eventually came across them in that textbook later on? No doubt, my respect for him would have been sustained if not increased!

Undoubtedly, one can justifiably appropriate someone's work provided he directed the credit or glory to the owner of the work who is the original source of the work. Let me use Plagiarism, being the issue on focus as an example: Plagiarism is very bad and condemnable. "Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. In educational contexts, there are different definitions of Plagiarism depending on the institution."(Wikipedia)

From the instance I gave above, I did an appropriation of someone's work, and I am not claiming to be the source of what described plagiarism to be. That's why I made use of quotation marks and at the end of the quotation, I showed in brackets that 'Wikipedia' is the source of that quote. It is then up to my reader to decide whether to verify the quote in Wikipedia right away, or later on for a confirmation.

As noted above, plagiarism is a serious punishable offence by law as it denies one the credit which he deserves for his work simply because, the person who appropriated his work didn't want the credit to go to him. Now, having studied the Steemit Etiquette on Steemit community, I am determined to strictly adhere to the Steemians Etiquette.