Faculty Resources - English:

Sample Definition of Plagiarism

Excerpt used with permission from Linn-Benton Community College

WHAT IS IT TO PLAGIARIZE? According to Webster's New World Dictionary, to plagiarize means "to take writings or ideas from another and pass them off as one's own." Word histories can also be revealing: to plagiarize comes from the Latin word plagiarius, which means "kidnapper." So plagiarism is stealing someone else's "baby" (or intellectual property) and lying to cover your theft. It is a serious offense at college; it is a much more serious if done by someone at work.

Not all plagiarism is intentional: deliberate theft or deceit. Some plagiarism results from forgetting or not knowing what plagiarism is.

Plagiarism, sometimes called "cheating" or "dishonesty," is not just the failure to give credit for an exact quotation. It is also the failure to mark all kinds of borrowings correctly.

Plagiarism includes both intentional and unintentional acts:

• Buying a paper on the Internet and turning it in as yours -- This is obviously intentional.
• Copying sections of someone's original and putting them into your text without documentation as if you had written them.
• Copying a sentence or even an important, exact phrase of two words or more or a coined word (which or may not be copywritten) without the use of quotation marks and credit.
• Copying the structure of someone else's argument and merely "translating" key words to your style.
• Using someone else's results in your own words without giving him or her credit.
• Forgetting to document any borrowing when you are quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, or importing and placing a graphic.

In addition to the definition offered by Linn-Benton, OWEAC also recommends including the following pieces of information recommended by Princeton:

Plagiarism may also include:

• False Citation or use of False Data: attributing information to an incorrect source or using data that a student knows to be false.
• Multiple Submissions: if a student submits work in multiple courses, without explicit permission from the appropriate instructors.