Creating a written piece of work, or a song or other production isn’t always easy. It takes a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately, not everyone realises this and not everyone is willing to work as hard to produce original work. Plagiarism is a common concern all over the world. Whether it’s at schooling level, through print media or through music, it’s a real problem.
What is plagiarism?
To plagiarise means that a person steals and passes off the ideas or words of another as one’s own. It is essentially theft of another person’s ideas.
Further definitions describe it as an act of fraud that involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it or carelessly or inadequately citing ideas or words that have been borrowed from another source.
How does plagiarism happen?
It’s often unintentional, but includes copying another person’s sentences or paragraphs without properly citing the source. At times, people use art, graphs, illustrations, statistics or other peoples’ photographs without citing the sources properly. This amounts to plagiarism. Failing to put a quotation in quotation marks is another example of how plagiarism can happen.
How can plagiarism be avoided?
Always cite your sources. Give the writer or artist or musician or photographer their due credit.
Be clear about who said what. This way you avoid any confusion.
Know how to paraphrase. Paraphrasing doesn’t mean that you can change the original idea or thought. It doesn’t mean you can pass it off as your own idea either. Learn how to paraphrase effectively and you will avoid plagiarism.
Here’s a good resource for all information related to Plagiarism: www.plagiarism.org-resources