Plagiarism

Plagiarism is intellectual theft of another person's ideas, word and/or research. Plagiarism is dishonest and unacceptable. According to Gordon Harvey, the word 'plagiarism' originates from the Mediterranean world where the plagiarii were pirates who kidnapped children.(1) Thus plagiarism is effectively "stealing someone else's brainchild." (2)

In Writing History, William Kelleher Storey articulates four types of plagiarism that you must avoid. The descriptions below are reworded from Storey's explanations.(3)

1) Direct plagiarism

This is when you copy the exact words of an author without quotation marks, thus pretending they are your own.

2) Indirect plagiarism

In this form of plagiarism you keep the basic structure of the author's work but barely change the words. Here is an example. This paragraph appeared in Newsweek magazine.(4)

If you want to be a Republican president—and Bill Frist of Tennessee does—there's no better place to be on a Memorial Day weekend than where he was planning to be last Sunday: in Charlotte, N. C., at Lowe's Motor Speedway, waving a green flag as honorary starter of the Coca-Cola 600

It is plagiarism to restate this paragraph something like this.

Bill Frist of Tennessee wants to be president and the best location for him to be at on Memorial Day was Charlotte, N.C where he could wave the starter's flag at the Coca-Cola 600

PLEASE NOTE: IT DOES NOT MATTER IF YOU FOOTNOTE THIS 'REWRITE'. In this version both the idea and the words are stolen and so a footnote would imply that the words are your own, even if the idea is not. But the words belong to the authors too. You must either quote directly using quotation marks and a footnote or change the words substantially, still giving the necessary footnote.

3) Inadvertant plagiarism

This is when you accidentally forget to put quotation marks around a passage of someone else's work. This is what hapened to the noted historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin but forgetfulness is a sloppy defense. Be careful and give yourself enough time to check the paper thoroughly.

4) Academic Dishonesty

This includes getting someone else to write the paper, resubmitting or utilizing a paper from an older student, downloading or buying a paper from the internet or submitting the same paper in two courses without permission from both teachers. All of these practices will result in a zero.

1 Gordon Harvey, Writing with Sources (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1995), 27-29

2 William Kelleher Storey, Writing History (New York: Oxford Uniuversity Press, 2004), 33

3 Ibid 34-35

4 Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper, The Cellular Divide, Newsweek Magazine, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8017170/site/newsweek/ (1 June, 2005)