What is plagiarism?
It is common to hear students describe plagiarism as merely borrowing another person's
original product or idea. This is inaccurate however since plagiarism is not borrowing or
copying. It is stealing.
Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as follows:
an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author
without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not
crediting the original author.
This means plagiarism is similar to committing fraud. This is closely related to copyright theft
and patent infringement. An argument that was common in the past was that intellectual
property has no physical manifestation and therefore, by definition, cannot be stolen. This is
of course not true, and plagiarism has become, in some cases, a punishable offense. The
recognition of someone's intellectual property forms the cornerstone of patent law and is the
reason why you cannot start selling your own brand of Apple products from your backyard.
In the academic field, plagiarism can occur in the following ways:
• turning in someone else's work as your own
• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work,
whether you give credit or not
So how do you avoid plagiarism? You cite your sources. By acknowledging that you have
borrowed some material, you give credit where it is due. Plagiarism does not stop at text
though. In music especially there has often been cases of plagiarism accusations. The well-
known them from Ghostbusters went through a case of plagiarism when Huey Lewis accused
the creator of the Ghostbusters theme, Ray Parker, of stealing the melody. There did seem to
be some similarities between the songs and Parker ended up settling out of court although,
especially in music and art, the definition of plagiarism does not seem so black and white
anymore. You can listen to a comparison of the two songs here:
Nadupalli of the University of Pretoria defines the following types of plagiarism:
• The Ghost Writer
The writer turns in another’s work, word-for-word, as his/her own.
Academic Writing 181
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• The Photocopy
The writer copies significant portions of text straight from a single source, without alteration.
• The Potluck Paper
The writer tries to disguise plagiarism by copying from several different sources, tweaking the
sentences to make them fit together while retaining most of the original phrasing.
• The Poor Disguise
Although the writer has retained the essential content of the source, he/she has altered the
paper’s appearance slightly by changing key words and phrases.
• The Labour of Laziness
The writer takes the time to paraphrase most of the paper from other sources and makes it
all fit together, instead of spending the same effort on original work.
• The Self-Stealer
The writer ‘borrows’ generously from his/her previous work, violating policies concerning the
expectation of originality adopted by most academic institutions.
• The Forgotten Footnote
The writer mentions an author’s name for a source but neglects to include specific
information on the location of the referenced material. This often masks other forms of
plagiarism by obscuring source locations.
• The Mis-informer
The writer provides inaccurate information regarding the sources, making it impossible to find
them.
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