Tips on Avoiding Plagiarism
Published in Writing Tips on 11/7/2006
Plagiarism is to writing what steroids are to baseball. Plagiarism can sink your academic career. Find out how to avoid this trap.
It's late on a rainy Sunday night and you are wrestling with the opening paragraph of a 10-page research paper on Samuel Beckett that is due tomorrow morning. You can barely concentrate on the notes in front of you because you are so busy castigating yourself for waiting till the last minute. In the midst of all this anxiety and recrimination you stumble across a website, www.sbeckettreader.com, a treasure trove of resources for the Beckett scholar. And as you stroll down the list of essays and criticism, your eyes light up – Farce and Absurdity in Endgame and Waiting for Godot by Eric Richardson, Iowa Review, #4, 1998.
Perfect! You immediately begin to skim the essay and your excitement grows. The theme of the article matches your thesis statement exactly. There are more than enough examples cited that you can poach, and the source – a little read journal from some mid-western university- is obscure enough that your teacher certainly would not have read the article. You can just cut and paste whole chunks of the journal article, write some new transitions between paragraphs and a new conclusion and you'll be done! You might actually get a couple of hours of sleep tonight. You throw out a small prayer of thanks to the internet gods for freeing knowledge from the tyranny of the textbook and start copying. Not only will you now be able to turn your essay in on time but it will be a strong essay worthy of a good grade. Harvard, here I come!
It takes over a week for your professor to get the paper back to you. By that point you've moved on to other tests, other papers. So it is with great horror that you read the grade: F: Most of this paper was plagiarized – see me after class. Well, so much for your good grade. Now you'll be lucky if you even pass the course. And forget about that recommendation letter for Graduate school you were going to ask your prof to write. As it stands now, he would rather see you arrested than admitted to grad school.
The above story is just one of many examples of plagiarism that dash hopes and derail dreams. Don't let this happen to you. To avoid this nasty fate, review the tips below brought to you by the writing professionals at Essay Advantage. But first, let's take a look at what plagiarism is exactly.
The modern word 'plagiarism' comes from the Latin plagiarius meaning plunderer or kidnapper. It was used to refer to those who stole slaves or children. Martial (AD 40-104) was the Latin poet who first used the word in a way somewhat similar to our modern pejorative usage. Given the amount of space Martial dedicated to railing against those who stole his work, we can only assume that he was plagued by plagiary. “Do you know how it comes that Philinus, who never sleeps with his wife, is yet a father? Gaditanus must answer that, Avitus: he writes nothing, and yet he is a poet.” In this, and many other snappy epigrams, Martial addressed, with scorn and contempt, the idea of literary theft.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the playwright Ben Jonson was the first author, writing in English, to use the word 'plagiarism.' It appears in the fourth act of Jonson's satirical comedy Poetaster (1601). As recounted by Ian Donaldson in his essay “The Fripperie of Wit”: Jonson and Plagiarism,” the poet Tibullus indignantly seizes a copy of some verses that have just been sung by Crispinus, a pretender to poetry. 'Why the ditty's all borrowed!', Tibullus exclaims, 'tis Horaces; hang him, plagiary.'” Like Martial, Jonson seems to have been preoccupied with the verbal thievery of others. An air on irony is lent to this observation when we realize that Jonson had liberally helped himself to the words and imagery of several other authors.
We see, then, that the notion of plagiarism has been around for a long time. It existed in antiquity when the line between imitation and originality was complicated by the process of mimesis, which encouraged writers to borrow freely from their literary ancestors. It existed, as well, in Renaissance England when mimesis was still very much practiced and when collaborative writing was the norm, at least for theatrical works. Viewed in this way, plagiarism existed long before the concepts of 'authority' and 'originality' were fully articulated. This is not to say that the definition of plagiarism has existed unchanged since the time of Martial. That the word was not used in the English language until the 17th century speaks at some length of the shifting notions of appropriate and inappropriate literary borrowing over the centuries. The definition of plagiarism depends, at least in part, on the societal norms under which it is recognized. To be accused of plagiarism in Martial's time was to be treated with ridicule or contempt. To stand accused in modern times is to risk much greater punishment. Such as being expelled from college.
With that in mind, review the following tips for avoiding plagiarism.
1. Don't procrastinate. Putting off your assignments until the last minute increases the likelihood that you will fall prey to copying the work of another writer. In any case, waiting until the last minute ensures that the work you turn in will not be your best. Start early even if it's just creating an outline which will help you think about your topic.
2. Cite all sources that you use. Remember to cite the use of any and all sources that you use in your paper. The Essentials of MLA Style is an excellent guide to the intricacies of citing sources.
3. Pay close attention to your note taking. Take clear and specific notes making sure to include in your notes any attribution of thoughts of words you may want to use later. Plagiarism often starts with sloppy note taking. Indeed, some would argue that the history of plagiarism is the history of the notebook. You read some pithy comment and jot it down in your notebook, forgetting to attribute the comment to the original author. Later, you come across the words and include them in your paper as if they were your own. It may even be an honest mistake. This doesn't change the fact that it is wrong.
4. Don't make slight revisions from something you are reading and then act as if you wrote it. If the ideas you are relating are someone else's, you must attribute them. It is better to cite too much rather than not enough. If you have any questions, refer to any number of style guides out there. There are also style guides for citing sources from the Internet, such as Online! A reference guide to using Internet sources, (1997) New York: St. Martin's Press.
5. Do not do all of your research online. There are several troubling aspects concerning research papers and the Internet. First of all, the Internet makes it very easy to amass a large amount of information and opinion on almost any topic. The catch is that most of it is wrong. If you are attending a college or university, chances are they have a library. Don't be afraid to use it. Secondly, the Internet makes plagiarism that much more tempting in that it presents you with so much information, much of it seemingly unattributable. Don't be fooled. You must cite every idea, sentence, paragraph, or notion that is not your own.
If you still have questions or concerns, feel free to contact one of our writing professionals here at Essay Advantage. Click here for contact information.
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