COM 301 Introduction to Rhetorical Research

Plagiarism is presenting another's words, analysis, interpretation or other work as your own. It is intellectual theft, academically dishonest, compromises your reputation and jeopardizes your college career. 

Plagiarism is not the same thing as copyright violation. Violating copyright is a legal concept, plagiarism is an ethical concept; you can commit plagiarism without violating copyright and, you can violate copyright without committing plagiarism. 

Forms of Plagiarism

• Quoting without attribution
• Paraphrasing or rephrasing without attribution
• Presenting an interpretation, ideas or opinions without attribution
• Using graphs, statistics, art, music that are not considered to be common knowledge without attribution
• Self plagiarism, including reusing the same paper for multiple classes.

Examples:

Ideas:  

• Plagiarized idea: If you take away all other forms of government people will natural create a democracy.
• Attributed: According to Thomas Paine, in the absence of any other form of government people would create a democracy.

Quotations:

• Plagiarized quote: Thomas Paine said that he offered simple fact, plain arguments and common sense. 
• Attributed:  Thomas Paine said that he "offered simple fact, plain arguments and common sense."

Paraphrasing:

• Original text: "Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection to England." (Source, Thomas Paine's Common Sense)  
• Plagiarism through paraphrase:  Because Europe has so many kingdoms when England is at war with one of them American trade is ruined because of her connection with England.  

Interpretation: 

• Plagiarized interpretation: The first modern journalist was Thomas Paine because of the way he used media.
• Attributed: According to Katz, Thomas Paine can be considered the first modern journalist because of his effective use of media (print) against a power structure (monarchy). Jon Katz The Age of Paine Wired 3.05 May 1995 

Self-Plagiarism

Reuse of your own content such as text, charts or graphs, without attribution. This is considered plagiarism because it does not credit the original source and misleads readers into believing this new, original, content.

Source: "What Is Plagiarism," University of Notre Dame Libraries, https://libguides.library.nd.edu/plagiarism

Digital content makes it easy to accidently plagiarize by using copy/paste then forgetting to provide attribution. Organizing your research will not only help you complete your assignments, it will help you avoid plagiarism. 

• Use a citation manager such as RefWorks or Zotero so you know what sources you've consulted and plan to use.
• Keep copies of the articles you plan to cite in a folder (electronic or paper) and make a note of how this article relates to your research such as 'supports my position that chocolate is culturally associated with women' or 'I have to refute this article's position that chocolate should be banned in public schools.' 
• Start a rough outline and include quotes AS quotes along with a note on why that quote is important to your argument.
• DO NOT copy and paste large chunks of text as a start to your paper.  

Adapted from "Avoiding Plagiarism," University of Notre Dame Libraries, https://libguides.library.nd.edu/plagiarism