WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?

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Plagiarism is the act of using ideas, words, or thoughts of someone else as if it your own, and not giving the person credit.

When you write on a subject matter and you get some ideas, thoughts, or words from someone else to add to your work, but you did not give them credit for it, you have just performed plagiarism.

It cuts across different fields of human endeavors such as music, movies, authorship, school project work. It is mostly found in the publishing industry.

Types of Plagiarism

• Complete Plagiarism: This is a situation where you use the ideas, thoughts, and words of another person in your name.

• Direct Plagiarism:

This is when text is taken word-for-word from another source. You may often copy and paste information off the Internet and put it on your posters and in reports. This is plagiarism if the website’s name is not included and quotes are not used around the information. Source

• Paraphrasing Plagiarism: This is when you change some words of someone else slightly to make it seem like it is your own.

• Accidential Plagiarism: This is when you perform the act of plagiarism unintentionally. It could be that you have no knowledge of plagiarism and you have no one to guide you.

• Mosaic or Structure Plagiarism:

Changing words while still using the sentence from a source is as much plagiarism as if every word was copied and pasted. You should paraphrase information – put it into your own words and sentence style – and cite your source.Source

What Makes Plagiarism Matter a lot?

The very act of plagiarism goes against the integrity of writing. The integrity of writing is a principle that is based on intellectual honesty and should be followed by all writers irrespective of the field of writing you fall into.

It also shows that you have not gotten a good grasp of subject matter, therefore it hinders the learning capabilities that one can get when doing things originally.

Having a work that is plagiarized shows that you lack writing ethics and this can cause a serious dent in your career in the future.

It also makes a person lazy and not do their work well. When you are hardworking you try to avoid plagiarism at all costs and do your work well. But when you are lazy, you tend to fall into the trap of plagiarism which make your work less original.

Finally, plagiarism is a taken very seriously as those tasked with detecting plagiarism would swing into action once found.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

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As stated previously plagiarism is a very serious offence therefore it is important that it should be avoided at all costs.

The best way to avoid plagiarism is to learn about plagiarism and the principles behind it. Once learnt you begin to implement it to get the best practices.

There are different ways of committing plagiarism, but even if you do so accidentally, you may find yourself in trouble.

When writing your work try to keep information of the source from where you are getting thoughts, ideas, and words from. When you are done writing you put the source to the information that you used. This is known as Citation.

By citing the source of the information that you used, you are giving credit to the person you got ideas, thoughts, and words from. You also make your work to be free from plagiarism.

It should be understood that plagiarism is not just about citing the source of information, but as a matter of upgrading your writing skills so that you work can be as good as it gets.

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