Plagiarism, << PLAY juh rihz uhm, >> is the act of presenting another person’s work or ideas as one’s own. For example, a student who copies words or ideas from a website or book without identifying the source has committed plagiarism. Plagiarism is regarded as morally wrong.
Plagiarism may also involve copyright infringement. Copyright is a type of ownership given to artists, authors, musicians, and other creators of original works (see Copyright ). Copyright infringement is the use of copyrighted material without permission or necessary payment. The owner of a copyrighted work may sue anyone who plagiarizes it.
In popular culture, plagiarism or copyright infringement is not always easy to determine. Is an artist just inspired by a work to create a similar one, or is an artist purposely using parts of another’s work? For example, rap musicians sometimes sample (take small phrases of music) from another musician’s work and incorporate that music into a song. But they must get clearance (legal permission) from the owners of the sampled music. Illegal sampling can lead to lawsuits or other consequences. Writers of a type of fiction called fan fiction take characters or settings from well-known works and use them in their own stories. Copyright holders may or may not regard this as a violation. However, in the fields of education, journalism, and publishing, such use of another’s work without acknowledging the source is considered plagiarism.
Careful writers place quotation marks around text they did not compose themselves. They use citations to name the sources quoted or used in a work. Citations can be written in many ways. However, at a minimum, they give the name of the author, title of the work, and often the date of publication. In the case of material from an unsigned website, a citation names the page title, the site itself, and often the date the material was accessed on the Internet.
Some concepts or facts—such as a classic fairy tale or the date of United States President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination—cannot be credited to any single person. Such ideas can be written about without including a citation, if the opinions expressed in the writing are original. However, a writer using another author’s analysis of such ideas and concepts must identify and credit that author. See Writing skills (Preparing citations) .
Schools and universities may discipline students for plagiarizing. Penalties for students caught plagiarizing may range from failing a class to being expelled from school. A journalist who copies someone else’s work may be fired from his or her job at a newspaper or magazine. A book publisher may choose to stop selling a book that contains plagiarism and to recall unsold copies of the work from stores.
