The epidemic of plagiarism has spread across the nation among students, writers, editors, and the list goes on. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and ideas whether in writing or other media, and without proper credit given to the source. Plagiarism is an important concept to understand and is taken very seriously especially in colleges and universities, because if a source is not properly cited, it is considered cheating. Basically, what it comes down to is someone else's work is getting stolen. Say you did something you thought was pretty impressive; fixed a car, painted a mural, won a marathon, but someone you didn't even know took credit for it? Plagiarism works the same way, and the person who produced the idea deserves to be recognized for their work. If prevention of plagiarism isn't taken seriously, there are extreme, sometimes life effective consequences. Those caught plagiarizing can sometimes receive more than just low grades and a detention. For a bigger picture, colleges can expel people from programs and sometimes the school altogether. According to Lemoyne College Library, one student was sent home from her study abroad program simply for using three simple sentences from Wikipedia without accreditation to the piece. This problem is not being pointed out to order a refrain from utilizing any outside ideas that support your own writing and support your points in a piece, but simply to give credit and recognition where its due. In order to avoid any association or participation in plagiarizing, simply cite your sources. When paraphrasing, you can mention the source, or you could also directly quote the information you are using, and after your quote put the source in parenthesis. A reoccurring question concerning plagiarism is how do you know what is information that needs to be cited? Typically, if there is even a question, and the information in your work is not your original thought, you need to cite it, better to be safe than sorry! There are many tools to help you cite sources properly, given the constant problems with plagiarism, so not to worry. There are many writing books, writing tools, as well as writing labs at colleges that are there to assure that your work is written without stolen information.
Works Cited
"Real Life Examples of Plagiarism." Leymoyne. Springshare, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.
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