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Types of Plagiarism

Copy and Paste | Word Switch | Metaphor | Idea | Reasoning Style/Organization


Copy and Paste

Any time you lift a sentence or significant phrase intact from a source, you must use quotation marks and reference the source.

Word Switch

If you take a sentence from a source and change around a few words, it is still plagiarism. If you want to quote a sentence, then you need to put it in quotation marks and cite the author and article. But quoting Source articles should only be done if what the quote says is particularly useful in the point you are trying to make in what you are writing. In many cases, a quotation would not really be useful. The person who plagiarizes is sometimes just too lazy to synthesize the ideas expressed in the Source article.

Metaphor

Metaphors are used either to make an idea clearer or give the reader an analogy that touches the senses or emotions better than a plain description of the object or process. Metaphors, then, are an important part of an author's creative style. If you cannot come up with your own metaphor to illustrate an important idea, then use the metaphor in the Source Article, but give the author credit for it.

Idea

If the author of the source article expresses a creative idea or suggests a solution to a problem, the idea or solution must be clearly attributed to the author. A word about "common knowledge:" Students seem to have a hard time distinguishing author's ideas and/or solutions from common knowledge, or public domain information. Common knowledge or public domain is any idea or solution which people in the field accept as general knowledge. For example, what a black hole is and how it is defined is general knowledge. You do not need to reference a general description of a black hole. The escape velocity of earth is also general knowledge and needs no reference. The distance to the center of the Galaxy is also general knowledge. However, a new idea about how to look for black holes or a new solution to a physics problem needs to be attributed to the authors. If you don't know what is accepted as public domain in a particular field, ask.

Reasoning Style/Organization

When you follow a Source Article sentence-by-sentence or paragraph-by-paragraph, it is plagiarism, even though none of your sentences are exactly like those in the Source article or even in the same order. What you are copying in this case is the author's reasoning style.

For some good examples of each plagiarism style, see:

Barnbaum, C. (2002). “Plagiarism: A Student's Guide to Recognizing It and Avoiding It.” Retrieved May 16, 2002, from the Web site of C. Barnbaum.