First Published on June 15, 2008
Plagiarism: Why it Matters and How to Avoid It
In the Citation Guide I explain how to reference The Pequod website if you use its contents in your own work or writing. This page goes into more detail on the nature of plagiarism, gives some real-life examples of how plagiarists do get caught, and - more positively - suggests why correct referencing and citation can be helpful for your own work, rather than a chore.
What is Plagiarism?
The word plagiarism derives from Latin roots: plagiarius, an abductor, and plagiare, to steal. Stealing is precisely what you are doing if you re-use work derived from The Pequod without acknowledgement; such reproduction without citation will be taken as a breach of my copyright terms.
Most colleges and universities have severe penalties for students caught plagiarising. At the university at which I teach, for example, students are warned that if plagiarism is discovered in their thesis or dissertation, examiners are expected to fail the candidate and that the student will not be allowed to resubmit their work.
How Can Plagiarism Happen?
Plagiarism can happen in one of two principal ways:
"A friend of mine had frantically finished his essay a few hours before the deadline. He lay down for a nap, and woke just five minutes before the essay needed to be submitted. He swiftly printed off his essay, and handed it in. A week later, he received a letter accusing him of plagiarism. Horrified, he checked his computer to find that, in his haste, he had printed and submitted his draft version - without references - rather than his final version. His mark was struck off, and instead of getting a distinction he got a pass."
- Consciously, if you deliberately copy the words, concepts or arguments of other people, and pass them off as if they are your own. The most overt example is downloading a paper from the internet, or quoting substantial chunks of an essay without surrounding them in quotation marks, and attributing them through footnotes and/or a bibliography.
- Unconsciously, if you absorb the words, concepts or arguments of other people and rewrite them into your own work, but without acknowledgement. Alternatively, you may simply be disorganised and not have time to compile a list of works cited before the deadline (see the box-out on the right for a true story).
Both types of plagairism are to be avoided and may well carry a similar penalty if you are caught. Clearly the latter is less devious, but it is also the more easy to slip into almost by accident or by poor preparation. With almost every essay I write, I find myself in the proof-reading process realising that an idea which I thought, on writing, was uniquely mine I realise, on reflection, to have been sparked by something I read last year.
To admit to the permanent possibility of plagiarism by compiling an accurate list of works cited is a mark of humbleness, since it acknowledges fully that no work is ever, except in a very small but vital proportion, the spontaneous and unique insight of its author.
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Do Plagiarists Get Caught?
The short answer to this question is: yes. In my experience as a university teacher, and as the creator of The Pequod, I have uncovered directly or been told of numerous cases of a student being discovered to have plagiarised. For example:
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If you have written an average essay, and suddenly a sentence of great insight and fluency appears in the middle of it, alarm bells will start to ring. It may take only a quick Google search to find the internet paper from which it has been taken (see related link for a true story of a teacher who caught her pupil plagiarising The Pequod). Alternatively, many universities, colleges and schools run all assignments through automatic plagiarism software, such as Turnitin.
- You may think it is possible to get away with reproducing a nice sounding phrase without quotation marks, such as talking about Hedda Gabler's "fetishistic pistols" (a phrase first used by Elaine Showalter). The trouble is, if you think it is a good term, the chances are that some of your classmates will as well. The moment it crops up in more than one essay, it is not too hard to work out that unattributed copying has been going on.
- You might copy from a text so rarely used - the library stamp in it is from the last century - that you imagine no reader would ever know of it. But remember that, especially if you are at a university, your essay may be read by authorities on the subjects on which you are writing, and so if you use a book, however esoteric, the chances are they will know of it. As happened in one case I have heard of, they may even have written it themselves. Plagiarising the very person who is going to be marking your work is undoubtedly a bad idea!
Why Correct Citation Makes Everyone a Winner
One of the reasons people plagiarise is that they think it devalues the quality of their own work if they use too many quotations from other people. But this is not necessarily a bad thing; all good scholars admit that their work is only ever building on the existing achievements of others, and that good scholarship is not just about the finished product but about the efforts of researching and reading material that preceded it.
Whilst referencing might seem a pain, you can turn it to your advantage. Even if you do quote lots of other writers, you can still show that you have done good work, and use references to improve your own skills, and so increase your ability to write imaginatively and with originality. Here are some reasons why good citation can help you, as well as being required by your marker and the author whose work you are copying:
- When it comes to revision (or another reader) you (or they) will not only be able to see at a glance what books or articles you have read, but also to place them in context (e.g. Are they good on feminism, hot on the textual history etc.).
- If you find yourself referencing lots of specific points drawn from lectures, you are probably clinging too closely to these, and need to start thinking independently.
- If your essay makes extensive use of secondary quotation, it will be clear just by looking at the number of footnotes that you have perhaps not got the balance quite right.
- If you want to show how hard you have worked on the essay, rather than letting critics work for you, then this may encourage you to read away from the standard critics. For example, if you are keen to demonstrate that you have used "enterprising or imaginative approaches" (First Class criteria) then you can choose secondary reading which is perhaps not obviously related to the primary texts in question and use these as a way in (e.g. Miller's on drama in general used as a way-in to O'Neill). When you reference these critics, you are thus demonstrating a very broad "awareness of critical issues" without this compromising your desire to show independent work, which is to connect different areas not necessarily immediately related.
- If you want to demonstrate that you have comprehended different criticism, but do not want this to disturb the flow of your essay, you can use the footnotes to carry out a brief meta-criticism. For example, if you quote Critic A, then in the reference to him, you could continue with "Though note that this is disputed by Critic B, although he was writing some 100 years earlier." You are thus "showing excellent awareness of critical issues" whilst still showing "thoughtful independent analysis" in your essay proper (First Class criteria).
