1. UNDERSTANDING PLAGIARISM English 1113 Sybil Canon, Instructor

2. It’s 10:30 pm and your paper has to be submitted in one hour and 29 minutes. You are almost through, but you need one more source. In your haste, you cut and paste a paragraph from the internet. You are confident that no one will notice just one paragraph that was not cited or paraphrased. You submit the paper, relax and go to bed.
What you may not know is that in today’s age of technology, your teacher will submit your paper into a software program that will very easily highlight that one paragraph, and, at the least, you will receive a failing grade on the paper, or perhaps, you may be asked to withdraw from college.

3. Yes, plagiarism is that serious
Yes, plagiarism is that serious! Here is what your Student Guide has to say about plagiarism:
Plagiarism
The following is an excerpt from the Student Guide: Students involved in cheating or plagiarism will be reported to a five-member Ad Hoc Committee on Cheating and Plagiarism. The chairman of this committee will be the Academic or Career-Technical Dean as determined by the student’s major. Other committee members will be the division director/chairman of the department in which the alleged dishonesty occurred, the student’s faculty adviser and two Student Government representatives. This committee will review the alleged act and may assign sanctions ranging from imposing a failing grade in the course to withdrawal from the College.

4. Consequences of Plagiarism
In 1988, the current Vice President of the United States,
Joe Biden, was forced to withdraw from the Presidential
campaign when it was learned that he had used parts of speeches from other previous candidates.
Mariah Carey has spent more than $1 million defending herself against charges of plagiarism concerning what are supposed to be her original songs but have proven to be written by someone else.
Of course, a student’s response may be, “Well, it hasn’t hurt them that much. Joe Biden is the vice-president, and Mariah Carey is still famous.” However, the plagiarism charges are always there and will never go away.

5. Defining Plagiarism
Quite simply, using another person’s ideas, thoughts, research, and words without giving that person proper credit is an example of academic plagiarism, and academic plagiarism is, to be perfectly blunt, theft. Imagine, if you will, that you spent years doing research on a particular topic. You gave your time, energy, and talents either to prove or disprove a theory. At long last, you have reached a conclusion and you publish a paper about your research. Then, a couple of years later, you are reading an article in the newspaper and someone is telling about your research as if he/she was the author of this paper. The same could be true of a song, an invention --- anything that was originally produced by one person and yet another person decides to use that original production as if he/she was the creator.

6. The following is from the Purdue OWL
Is It Plagiarism Yet?
There are some actions that can almost unquestionably be labeled plagiarism. Some of these include buying, stealing, or borrowing a paper (including, of course, copying an entire paper or article from the Web); hiring someone to write your paper for you; and copying large sections of text from a source without quotation marks or proper citation.
But then there are actions that are usually in more of a gray area. Some of these include using the words of a source too closely when paraphrasing (where quotation marks should have been used) or building on someone’s ideas without citing their spoken or written work. Sometimes teachers suspecting students of plagiarism will consider the students’ intent, and whether it appeared the student was deliberately trying to make ideas of others appear to be his or her own.
However, other teachers and administrators may not distinguish between deliberate and accidental plagiarism.

7. Continued from Purdue OWL
Here, then, is a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented:
Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
When you reuse or report an electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media
Bottom line, document any words, ideas, or other productions that originate somewhere outside of you. [my bolding and underlining]

8. Continued from Purdue OWL
There are, of course, certain things that do not need documentation or credit, including:
Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject
When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments
When you are using “common knowledge,” things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents)
When you are using generally-accepted facts [my example: driving while intoxicated is dangerous]
Generally speaking, you can regard something as common knowledge if you find the same information undocumented in at least five credible sources. Additionally, it might be common knowledge if you think the information you’re presenting is something your readers already know, or something that a person could easily find in general references sources. But when it doubt, cite; if the citation turns out to be unnecessary, your teacher or editor will tell you.

9. How to Cite
Your textbook for this course has a section, entitled “MLA Papers.” MLA stands for “Modern Language Association.” The MLA format is the format used in this course. Another format is called “APA” which stands for “American Psychological Association.” There are distinct differences in these formats, and both are used in academic settings.
The “MLA Papers” section of your textbook provides excellent examples for citing sources. Perhaps the word “cite” is not a familiar word to you. This simply refers to the method that you use to give credit for material that is not your own.

10. Conclusion
When I was growing up, my mother gave me this advice, “When in doubt, don’t do it.” However, in the case of citing or not citing, my advice to you is “When in doubt, do cite.” It is much better to be extremely careful about giving proper credit to another’s ideas than to risk a failing grade, or worse.
Oh, yes, and about that student who was trying to finish a paper at 10:30 pm that was due at midnight --- don’t be that student! Don’t procrastinate! Plan your time wisely and be disciplined about this and other online courses. It is easy when you do not attend a class in person to think you have plenty of time. You must remain as focused about your online courses as you are about those you attend in person.