Plagiarism is the art of stealing someone’s work and using it as your own. You can plagiarize in many different ways. The most common way to plagiarize is to copy and paste something from a website and present it as your own work. I didn’t know this before but you can plagiarize yourself. If you reuse something from a previous assignment that you wrote, it is still considered plagiarism because you’re using an idea that you have already used.
In high schools and post-secondary schools plagiarism is very serious. If you plagiarize and you’re caught in high school there is a possibility that you can get suspended. You may also get a call home. In universities or colleges it is a lot more serious. You will get expelled if you are caught plagiarizing.
Avoiding plagiarism all together is the best option for everyone. When writing a paper you have to think of your own sentences and not just copy a sentence and change up a few words. When you do not understand what a source is trying to tell you, you have two options. You can read the article again and search up words you do not know or you can simply move on to the next source and gather new ideas for the paper you’re writing.
Image credits: Sarah Hofstedt
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