Examples of Plagiarism. How To Notice And Remove Easily

Mike Deep • May 14, 2014

Plagiarism comes in plenty of forms. Whether it is intentional or not, it can easily be spotted if someone knows what to look for. In this article, we will introduce you to the four most common plagiarism examples. We hope that these examples of plagiarism will help you to correct your paper quickly and easily.

Examples Of Plagiarism: Direct Quotation

The first type of plagiarism is direct quotation – without the proper credit given. All authors have weak spots and their strong spots. However, taking credit for someone else’s strength does not mean that anything will change. The direct wording from the original author’s piece and transplanting them into a new piece is enough to get plagiarism caught if everyone is using the same pieces – or by running a plagiarism check. To avoid this, giving credit is a must on any assignment where quotes are needed.

Examples Of Plagiarism: Reworking The Wording

The second type of plagiarism is reworking the wording – however, they are still close to the original piece and there is no credit given. There are still small bits of the original wording in the new piece and they are missing credit in this type of plagiarism. Direct wording, in any case, must be given credit. Any phrase that was used in a different piece that is not given credit – even if it is just one phrase – counts as plagiarism.

Examples Of Plagiarism: Paraphrasing

A third way plagiarism takes place is a paraphrase that copies the layout of the original text. While the original author could use the words “morose”, “disgusting”, and “rude” and the rewrite uses “cross”, “yucky”, and “impolite”, if they are used in the same order, it could lead to plagiarism – whether the author of the new piece intended to do so or not. A paraphrase does not mean simply choosing new words and keeping the order and main ideas the same. It’s more than that; it means taking the information and reprocessing and reusing to create a new main idea and a new order of information.

Examples Of Plagiarism: No Citation

Another type of plagiarism comes at the end of a paper: no works are cited. Even if all that is used from a source (say a long paper on the topic from a different angle) is the general idea with a couple of small paraphrases that are nowhere near the original source, it needs to be cited. Footnotes are another way that usually stops plagiarism, but if the sources are not named it can lead to plagiarism.

Though these are simply the more common types of plagiarism, they can hurt a career in school or in a profession quite a bit. You may want to look at other resources here.