Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism: A Comprehensive Guide for Students (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I'm afraid some of you may have relaxed too much and didn't actually write your own papers. In fact, I believe a certain few of you took almost everything right off the internet.

Speaker 2: Damn. Worried you might be him? Then you should definitely keep watching. Hi, I'm Jessica from Scribbr, here to help you achieve your academic goals. Plagiarism is when you use someone else's words or ideas without crediting the source and pass it as your own. It's okay to use others' words and ideas, but you have to cite them. Committing plagiarism might save you time for a short while, but it comes at a high price. Depending on your institution's rules and the type of plagiarism, you might fail your course or even get suspended or expelled from your university. And no one wants that, right? Let's talk about five types of plagiarism you might encounter. Although they differ in severity, it's still not acceptable to commit any kind of plagiarism. And plagiarism checkers like Turnitin can detect all of them very easily. Forbidden plagiarism, also known as copy and paste plagiarism, as its name suggests, is when you directly copy and paste text from a source without citing the author. If you want to use an author's exact words, you need to quote the original source by putting it in quotation marks and include an in-text citation. Check out our video on how to quote. Imagine a patchwork. You take different pieces of cloth and make it into a whole. That's exactly what patchwork or mosaic plagiarism is. You copy phrases and ideas from different sources and put them together to create a new text. In order to piece the different texts together nicely, this kind of plagiarism often includes some paraphrasing. It also requires a little more effort than the rest. So if you're already putting in the effort anyways, might as well completely avoid it. If you need a little help on paraphrasing, I got you. Click this video here. Paraphrasing plagiarism is the most common type of plagiarism, so pay extra attention. It's completely okay to paraphrase, but just because you rewrote it in your own words doesn't make the idea yours. So remember to give credit and cite the original source. Global plagiarism is when you take someone else's work entirely and use it as your own. That includes if you find a text online and submit it as your own, but also if you get someone to write your essay for you. Like her.

Speaker 1: But this is the exact same paper, word for word, that you can buy for $15 on termpaper.com. It even has the same title and footnotes. Maybe they copied my paper.

Speaker 2: This is one of the most serious types of plagiarism, as it involves deliberately and directly lying about the authorship of a work. So don't even think about it. You can also commit plagiarism by reusing the work you've previously submitted. This is called self-plagiarism. So no turning in a paper you've already submitted for another class, or recycling ideas developed from previous assignments. Just because it's your own work, it still counts as academic dishonesty because you've already gotten credit for the work. Woohoo. Now you're ready to move on to how to avoid plagiarism. Click this video here. But before you go, don't forget to drop a like and subscriber. I'll see you there.