Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as, "To use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own words or ideas" according to merriam-webster dictionary. When most people plagiarize, they don't even realize that they are doing it. Plagiarizing includes everything from taking somebody else's work and changing a few words to copying and pasting work into your own document without correctly citing it. Although plagiarizing does not seem like a big deal, it is considered an act of fraud. In fact, you can be expelled from a school and in certain places it is considered a felony. One recent way of plagiarism that has come up recently is buying information. People think that because they are spending their own money on it, that it is not plagiarism. However, it is most definitely considered plagiarism. It is possible to prevent yourself from plagiarizing. The easiest way to do this is by paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is done by "chunking" up the information and putting it into your own words. Another way to prevent plagiarism is by correctly citing your information. If you take words from another document, you can put it into quotations and correctly cite it, without it being plagiarism.

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