Plagiarism can be an intentional or accidental act, but either way you can suffer severe consequences. These consequences are covered in the Academic Integrity Standards section of the Millikin Student Handbook. If you have additional questions about plagiarism, contact you class instructor or a librarian.
Defining Plagiarism
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition defines the act of plagiarizing as: "To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own." or "To appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another). intr. To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another."
Books and resources which provide information on writing research papers and citing information generally include a definition of plagiarism:
"By definition, a research paper involves the assimilation of prior scholarship and entails the responsibility to give proper acknowledgment whenever one is indebted to another for either words or ideas. ... Failure to give credit is plagiarism." Turabian, Kate. L. A Manual for Writers of Termpapers, Theses, and Dissertations, sixth edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996.
"Simply put, plagiarism is using others' ideas or words as if they were your own." Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher, second revised edition, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1999.
"To use another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the sources is to plagiarize. Plagiarism, then, constitutes intellectual theft. Strictly speaking, it is a moral and ethical offense rather than a legal one, since most instances of plagiarism fall outside the scope of copyright infringement, a legal offense." Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed. Modern Language Association of America, New York, 1999.
Although they may be worded slightly differently, they all state the same thing: Plagiarism is cheating!
The following are all examples of plagiarism:
Avoiding and Recognizing Plagiarism
Proper Citation Formats
Often one of the most difficult aspects of writing a paper is knowing how to properly integrate your sources into your paper. Many cases of plagiarism are unintentional and happen because the writer is unaware of how to properly incorporate and cite sources in the text of a paper. The following steps can help you make certain you have all the information you need to compile proper citations.