Hello friends, I am here again to present to us my achievement 3 task which is specifically on Content Etiquette. And today I will be writing an article/post about "What is Plagiarism" bearing in mind the different steemit formatting tools to drive complete abstinence from plagiarism.

What is Plagiarism

Plagiarism has become a menace in the blogging space given to the availability of all necessary information and data required to persecute any write-up needed for ours. In doing so, there has been flagrant abuse of content etiquette required to standardize the use of online articles.

According to the Online google definition of the term Plagiarism, it is "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. source.

Or in simple terms, I quote that definition as seen from the online source in this way to make appropriate referrals and hence avoid any form of plagiarism.

the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own

The act of lifting articles from online sources are not only limited to just write-ups, the same challenges are also seen while using images from public spaces. There are licensed images which one must pay before usage and entering their sources without paying for them also makes us culpable. We have to be discrete while dealing with image sources, and a better match for this is the act of going for images from free and non-licensed sources. The shutterstock.com and pexel.com are more reliable sources for this.

For me I think creating my own images makes it a-lot better than having to be careful while choosing my images.
Different types of plagiarism should guide us so as not to fall victim to this unholy menace in our blogging space. But for the scope of this post, I will be talking about the following;

• Direct Plagiarism
• Indirect Plagiarism

Direct Plagiarism

This is the most abusive type of content etiquette found in the online space where we have a clear case of "copy and paste", word for word lifting of materials without any form of referencing done to indicate its source. A user is observed to lift an article from a given source and own them without proper sourcing to indicate its origin. Most times we see cases of Copyright infringement and probably legal pursuits in this regard.

Indirect Plagiarism

Issues within these scenarios are mostly seen due to wrong or improper sourcing, wrong paraphrasing, Wrong use of quotations etc. These are mostly seen due to the wrong use of appropriate content tools to indicate while using content sources, not ours. In this case, the user is aware of the troubles associated with plagiarism but indirectly found wanting when there are failures to adequately enter the right protocol needed.

Ways to avoid Plagiarism

No	Do's	Remarks
1.	Summarize Properly	This can only be done when we understand what we are reading as well as writing. When we do, it is in our place to use our words of understanding to interpret the content read and still maintain its meaning.
2.	Paraphrasing	This is simply using our words to represent another author's post without changing its meaning. This should be done with proper referencing.
3.	Use of Quotation (>)	This entails in some cases that we can use the words of an author just the way it was said but in doing so, we can apply the use of quotation by the use of this sign > before the message. See the example above.

Consequences of Plagiarism
They are different Copyright violation penalties that are domiciled in different countries and their resultant punishment differs. Some of the Consequences seen are;

a). Jail Term: The resultant effect of plagiarism can lead to some Low/Mid-level jail terms with the option of Fine which serves as a deterrent to offenders in this category.

b). Loss of Reputation and Honorary Titles: In the academic field, there is a clear loss of reputation and honorary titles given to offenders of this crime. One already built a reputation is reduced to nullity with possible cancellation of course activities to serve as a deterrent.

c). Loss in Participation: I have read in the CryptoAcademy community where plagiarists are disqualified from participation in the community. This does not only limit one knowledge attainment in the crypto space which is what the community stands for but would also lose out from the reward scheme attached to it.

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