Plagiarism:
definitions and examples
While not every imaginable
mistake of plagiarism can be
covered below, these definitions and examples may help you clarify precisely
what plagiarism is. Briefly and
generally defined, plagiarism can take three different forms:
1)
Plagiarism:
Quoting words directly or using the ideas or facts presented by another
without citation. Two further notes
are relevant here:
a.
Citation involves using footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical citation at
the point of usage of source material in the paper.
So, putting a reference to your source in a bibliography alone is
insufficient citation for quotations or borrowed ideas and information.
b.
Acknowledging the source of facts is necessary when these facts do not
constitute “general knowledge.” General knowledge does NOT have to be cited. It is made up of facts that can be found in
any number of general sources (usually at least three such sources, such as
encyclopedias).
For example, the date of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Frederick
Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, and the name of the final Chinese imperial
dynasty (Qing) are general knowledge. Facts
or theories that exist in only a few sources or that are new or contested need
to be cited.
2)
Plagiarism: Quoting words directly without putting them in quotation marks.
This applies not only to full sentences, but also to characteristic
phrases of two to three words or even single words when particularly
distinctive.
3)
Plagiarism: Paraphrasing your source’s words too closely.
Alternatively, using the words and/or sentence structure of your source
without putting them into your own words. Note: this is often the most common form of plagiarism and the most
difficult to control. For a better
sense of this form of plagiarism, and others, see the examples below.
Examples of obvious
plagiarism:
1)
Plagiarism: A student purchases, steals or otherwise acquires an entire paper from
another student or another second party and turns the material in as her or his
own work.
2) Plagiarism: A student copies passages from another student’s paper, or uses the structure, ideas or words of another student’s work, past or present. In this case, a student who knowingly allows such use of his or her work is also a plagiarist.
3) Plagiarism: A student copies entire paragraphs, sentences, or long, characteristic phrases from an on-line encyclopedia or other electronic or paper source and inserts/pastes them into the body of his or her own paper without quotation marks and/or citation.
4) Plagiarism: A student draws specialized information from a secondary source, information that is not definable as general knowledge, inserts it in a paper, and does not cite, or incompletely cites, the source.
1)
Plagiarism: A student acquires specific information from her or his textbook, the
preface to a primary source, an encyclopedia, or any other more general source,
synthesizes it as background material in a paper, and does not cite the source
of the information.
2)
Plagiarism: A student acquires ideas or specific
information from an outside source, cites the material, but inadequately
paraphrases the material, thus failing to put it into her or his own words.
A few (hopefully) useful
examples (all examples conform to MLA
parenthetical citation form):
Case #1:
Original source:
“In
comparison with Byzantium or the caliphate, Europe west of the Elbe was for
centuries after the Roman collapse an almost insignificant backwater.
Its inhabitants felt themselves a beleaguered remnant and in a sense so
they were.” J.M. Roberts, History of the World, p.312.
1A)
Obviously,
simply copying the passage into a paper without quotation marks or citation is plagiarism:
1B)
This
is also plagiarism: (no quotation marks or citation):
Europe
west of the Elbe was for centuries an almost insignificant backwater, its
inhabitants feeling themselves a harassed remnant.
1C)
Still
plagiarism (quotation marks omitted):
According
to J.M. Roberts Europe west of the Elbe was for centuries after the Roman
collapse an almost insignificant backwater because its inhabitants felt
themselves a beleaguered remnant (312).
1D)
Still
plagiarism (inappropriate borrowing
of phrases and words):
Western
Europe remained an almost insignificant backwater long after Rome collapsed, its
people feeling themselves a besieged remnant (Roberts 312).
1E)
Still
plagiarism (inappropriate borrowing
of sentence structure/close synonyms):
Compared
to Byzantium or the lands of the Islamic caliph, Europe west of the Germanic
tribal lands was for many hundreds of years following the Roman disintegration a
nearly irrelevant backwoods. Its
people believed themselves a harassed vestige and in many ways that is just what
they were (Roberts 312).
1F)
Acceptable
quotation (although not recommended:
this is poor, unoriginal style):
According
to J.M. Roberts “Europe west of the Elbe was for centuries after the Roman
collapse an almost insignificant backwater” because “its inhabitants felt
themselves a beleaguered remnant” (312).
1G) Acceptable weaving of short quoted phrases with paraphrase
After
the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the people of Western Europe developed a
sense that they were “a beleaguered remnant,” for when set against the
Byzantine Empire or the Islamic world, they could sense that they had come to
live in an “insignificant backwater” (Roberts 312)
1H)
Acceptable
paraphrase:
After
the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the people of Western Europe developed a
sense that they were besieged and outnumbered, for when set against the
Byzantine Empire or the Islamic world, their isolation and lack of influence,
power or sophistication was obvious (Roberts 312).
Case #2:
Original source:
“In
many ways this period of capitalist-communist alliance against fascism –
essentially the 1930s and 1940s – forms the hinge of twentieth-century history
and its decisive moment. In many
ways it is a moment of historical paradox in the relations of capitalism and
communism, placed, for most of the century – except for the brief period of
antifascism – in a posture of irreconcilable antagonism.”
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, p.7.
2A)
Obviously,
simply copying the passage into a paper without quotation marks or citation is plagiarism:
2B)
This
is also plagiarism: (quotation marks omitted):
The
period of capitalist-communist alliance against fascism in the 1930s and 1940s
is the pivotal and decisive era in the twentieth-century because of the paradox
that the relations of capitalism and communism were, for the rest of the
century, those of irreconcilable difference (Hobsbawm 7).
2C)
Still
plagiarism (inappropriate borrowing
of phrases and words):
The
period of capitalist-communist alliance against fascism was pivotal to the
history of the twentieth-century history because the paradox of the 1920s and
1930s was that during the rest of the century capitalism and communism assumed
the posture of irreconcilable adversaries (Hobsbawm, 7).
2D)
Still
plagiarism (inappropriate borrowing
of sentence structure/close synonyms):
In
several respects the time of coalition between the communist and capitalist
powers to oppose the fascists – or the two decades beginning in the 1930s –
is the axis around which the history of the twentieth century revolves and is
its decisive era. In several
respects it is a time of contradiction in the relationship between communism and
capitalism which for most of the twentieth century, except when fighting
fascism, were diametrically opposed adversaries (Hobsbawm 7).
Eric
Hobsbawm argues that the two decades of antifascist coalition between the
communist powers and the capitalist west are the “decisive moment” of the
twentieth century, for paradoxically in all other times besides the twenty year
period ending in the 1940s they assumed “a posture of irreconcilable
antagonism” (7).
2F)
Acceptable
paraphrase:
The
great paradox of the twentieth century resides in the roughly twenty years of
antifascist coalition between the communist powers and the capitalist west.
These years were central to the history of the century because after
about 1950, as before the mid-1930s, these two forces were unflinchingly opposed
to each other (Hobsbawm 7).
Case #3:
Original source:
“What
is the significance of these statistics? The
most obvious and, at the same time, the most striking fact they reveal is that
in a period of twelve years the current circulation of the Edinburgh Review
(i.e. the first printing) increased nearly twentyfold, from seven hundred and
fifty to 13,000 copies. To put this
figure in perspective, it may be recalled that the circulation of The Times in
1816 was only 8,000 copies daily.” John Clive, Scotch Reviewers: The Edinburgh Review,
1802-1815, p.135.
3A)
Plagiarism
(failure to cite the source of facts)
The
Edinburgh Review was one of the most popular and influential periodicals
in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, with a circulation comparable to that of The
Times of London.
3B)
Acceptable
citation of facts:
The Edinburgh Review was one of the most popular and influential periodicals in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, with a circulation comparable to that of The Times of London (Clive 135).
For more examples and
information on plagiarism, other resources are available on the World Wide Web.
See for example,
http://www.hamilton.edu/writing/sources.html
In addition, you may use other commonly available writing guides to
assist with identifying plagiarism, such as Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style
Manual or her Rules for Writers.
Clive,
John. Scotch Reviewers: The
Edinburgh Review, 1802-1815. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
Hobsbawm,
Eric. The Age of Extremes: A
History of the World, 1914-1991. New
York: Pantheon, 1994.
Roberts,
J.M. History of the World.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.