On Plagiarism
Plagiarism
is a serious violation of academic
and student conduct rules and is punishable with
a zero grade for the assignment, for the course, and
possibly even more severe action.
Plagiarism is the intentional or accidental use of intellectual material produced by another person without acknowledging its source. This includes, but is not limited to:
(a.) Copying from the writings or works of others into one's academic assignment without attribution, or submitting such work as if it were one's own;
(b.) Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment; or
(c.) Paraphrasing the characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or other literary device of another without proper attribution and quotation marks to show what was borrowed.
It may lead to a note being placed in your academic record, the record consulted by a transfer institution when deciding whether you will be accepted there. Or the record checked by a certifying body to determine if you have done the work needed to gain a degree or certificate of proficiency.
To do well on the short Quiz on Plagiarism that follows this content item, please view this video on Plagiarism. Then read the text that follows, all of it. You will be tested on both the video and the text after you've finished both.
All written work submitted for a course, except for acknowledged quotations, must be expressed in the student's own words. It must also be constructed upon a plan of the student's own devising.
Another's work or words copied by the student without quotation marks to show what is being borrowed and without acknowledgment is plagiarized work, whether the work or words are from a book, from another student's work, from the internet, or from any other source.
Plagiarism can range from wholesale copying of passages from another's work to using the views, opinions, and insights of another without acknowledgment, to paraphrasing another person's original phrases without acknowledgment.
Plagiarism is the use of intellectual material produced by another person without acknowledging its source. This includes, but is not limited to:
(a.) Copying from the writings or works of others into one's academic assignment without attribution, or submitting such work as if it were one's own;
(b.) Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment; or
(c.) Paraphrasing the characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or other literary device of another without proper attribution.
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For more information about the policy in our course about Academic Honesty, please go here to the Santa Monica College website. The policy expressed here is the one that will be in force in our course.
How to Recognize Plagiarism: Examples
(The format of the following examples was drawn from Acknowledging the Work of Others; it illustrates several types of common plagiarism. The passages in boldface reflect plagiarism of the original passage followed in italics by an explanation why they constitute plagiarism.)
THE ORIGINAL PASSAGE
“This book has been written against a background of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of superstition, not of faith. It was written out of the conviction that it should be possible to discover the hidden mechanics by which all traditional elements of our political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific value, and has become unrecognizable for human comprehension, unusable for human purpose.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973 ed.), p.vii, Preface to the First Edition.
EXAMPLE I
Type of Plagiarism: Word-For-Word
[Student Writes:]
This book has been written against a background of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of superstition, not of faith. Interestingly enough, Arendt avoids much of the debates found in some of the less philosophical literature about totalitarianism.
When material is taken directly from a book, article, speech, statement, remarks, the Internet, or some other source, the writer must provide proper attribution. In this example, no credit is given to the author.
EXAMPLE II
Type of Plagiarism: the Blanket Attribution
This book has been written against a background of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of superstition, not of faith.1 Interestingly enough, Arendt avoids much of the debates found in some of the less philosophical literature about totalitarianism. (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)
When material is quoted word-for-word, a blanket attribution in parentheses is not enough. Quotation marks must show where the borrowed quote begins and where it ends. Next, the parenthetical citation must provide page numbers so the reader can locate the passage easily. Remember: the material that represents a direct quotation must either be put within quotation marks or indented.
EXAMPLE III
Type of Plagiarism: the Near Paraphrase
Hannah Arendt’s book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was written in the light of both excessive hope and excessive pessimism. Her thesis is that both Advancement and Ruin are merely different sides of the same coin. Her book was produced out of a belief that one can understand the method in which the more conventional aspects of politics and philosophy were mixed together so that they lose their distinctiveness and become worthless for human uses.
Even if the author’s exact language is not used, a footnote is required for material that is paraphrased. Altering a handful of words in the original still constitutes plagiarism, and quotation marks and a citation are in order.
EXAMPLE IV
Type of Plagiarism: the Mosaic
The first edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism was written in 1950. Soon after the Second World War, this was a time of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. During this time, Dr. Arendt argues, the traditional elements of the political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific value. In particular, the separation between the State and Society seems to have been destroyed. In this book, she seeks to disclose the hidden mechanics by which this transformation occurred.
Even though this example includes some original material, selected phrases of the original are woven throughout the passage - a. reckless optimism and reckless despair, b. traditional elements of the {our in original} political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific value, and c. hidden mechanics. This type of mosaic plagiarism is plagiarism all the same.
EXAMPLE V
Type of Plagiarism: the “cherrypicked phrase”
Following the Second World War, scholars from a variety of disciplines began to explore the nature of “totalitarianism.” One of the most pressing issues for these writers was understanding the “essence” of totalitarianism. How, for example, is a totalitarian regime different from an authoritarian regime? Although authors disagree on the precise answer to this question, a common thread running throughout most of the classic works on totalitarianism deals with the relationship between State and Society. In a totalitarian state, the traditional boundaries between State and society are dissolved into a conglomeration so that the two become indistinguishable.
This passage is almost entirely original, but the phrase “dissolved into a conglomeration” is taken directly from Arendt. Even though this is a short phrase, it must be footnoted. Only phrases that have truly become part of general usage can be used without citation.
Acknowledging the Work of Others
Education at its best, whether conducted in seminar, laboratory, or lecture hall, is a dialogue between teacher and pupil in which questions and answers can be sought and evaluated. If this dialogue is to flourish, students who enter higher education must assume certain responsibilities.
Among them is the responsibility to make clear what knowledge is theirs and what is someone else’s. Teachers must know whose words they are reading or listening to, for no useful dialogue can occur between a teacher and an echo or ghost.
Students who submit written work at our college and in our course must, therefore, be the authors of their own papers. Students who use facts or ideas originating with others must plainly distinguish what is theirs from what is not.
A Blanket Attribution (example #2 above) thrown in at the bottom of block of text is not enough. To misrepresent one’s work ignorantly is to show oneself unprepared to assume the responsibility presupposed by work on the college level. It should be obvious that none of this prohibits making use of the discoveries or ideas of others. What is prohibited is simply improper, unacknowledged use (commonly known as “plagiarism”). . . .
To acknowledge the work of others, observe the following conventions:
1. If you adopt someone else’s language, provide quotation marks showing where the borrowed words begin and end. Also, provide a reference to the source, either in the text or in a footnote, as prescribed by such publications as Format, The MLA Style Sheet, or the manual of style recommended by the course instructor.
Footnote form varies from discipline to discipline. In some fields, writers group references to a number of sources under a single footnote number, which appears at the end of a sentence or even of a paragraph. In other fields, writers use a separate footnote for each reference, even if this means creating two or three footnotes for a single sentence. It seems pointless, even counterproductive, to make the mechanics of footnoting unnecessarily complicated. If in a short, informal paper you cite a passage from a work all the members of your class are reading in the same edition, it may be entirely sufficient simply to cite page numbers (and if necessary the title of the text) parenthetically within your own sentences: “Hobbes suggests that life outside civil society is likely to be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Leviathan, p.53).” To ascertain what form to follow in these matters, ask your instructor.
2. If you adopt someone else’s ideas but you cannot place them between quotation marks because they are not reproduced verbatim, then not only provide a footnoted reference to the source but also insert in the text a phrase like one of the following: “I agree with Blank,” “as Blank has argued,” “according to some critics”; or embody in the footnote a statement of indebtedness, like one of these: “This explanation is a close paraphrase of Blank (pp. ),” “I have used the examples discussed by Blank,” “The main steps in my discussion were suggested by Blank’s treatment of the problem,” “Although the examples are my own, my categories are derived from Blank.” A simple footnote does no more than identify the source from which the writer has derived material. A footnote alone does not indicate whether the language, the arrangement of fact, the sequence of the argument, or the choice of examples is taken from the source. To indicate indebtedness to a source for such features as these, the writer must use quotation marks or provide an explanation in his or her text or in the footnote.
3. If some section of the paper is the product of a discussion, or if the line of argument adopted is such a product, and if acknowledgment within the text or footnote seems inappropriate, then furnish in a prefatory note or footnote an appropriate acknowledgment of the exact nature of the assistance you have received. Scholarship is, after all, cumulative, and prefatory acknowledgments of assistance are common. For example: “I, . . . , wish to express my appreciation to Dr. Harlow Shapley of the Harvard Observatory, who read the original manuscript and made valuable suggestions and criticisms, with particular reference to the sections dealing with astronomy” (Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [New York: the New American Library, 1958]).
4. Finally, and this is very important, ignorance of the meaning of the term “plagiarism” and the means of avoiding it – especially at the college level – cannot be used to excuse an instance of plagiarism as defined in this document. By "viewing" this page in our Canvas class, I will infer that you have read it carefully -- given that it is assigned here, in this module.
from Georgetown University Honor Council.