Plagiarism and how to avoid it
Plagiarism refers to duplication of someone else’s words, ideas or images so that they appear to be your own, without acknowledging the source of such information. This term is borrowed from the Latin word plagiarius which means kidnapper. It does not only occur through direct copying of someone else’s idea(s) but also through borrowing his/her ideas and putting them in your own words and without citing the sources of such information. Unless with permission from the pioneer, copyright laws do not allow more than 10% copy of someone else’s work. Even if you use essays from criterionessays.com for references, ensure they are cited.
All sources of information including, internet sources, book reviews, audiovisual materials, periodicals, eye witness accounts, museum collections and exhibits, trade associations, government documents, surveys and studies and personal interviews fall under copyright protection as long as they are recorded in some way. Thus, copying ideas from such sources without referring to them is violation of copyright laws and regulations and could lead to serious consequences to the offender, including loss of job, damage of reputations, severe penalties, discredit and regal prosecution or add to academic offences. Protection of all original sources of ideas has to be enhanced if academic integrity is to be attained in educational and other institutions. In other words, it is good to give credit where it is due.
Copying someone else’s ideas, words or any other original material is not always unacceptable provided it falls within the required limits of doing so. There are many different ways in which one can use ideas or words of another person in his/her writing while avoiding plagiarism. First, one will need to learn what plagiarism means.
The first step in avoiding plagiarism is to develop note taking skills from sources and documents. This is achieved through identification of main ideas and relevant information that one might require. It is important to underline keywords and concepts or the original text while paying attention to title, subtitle and the subheading. It is necessary to outline notes from different articles. This is followed by making a concise summary from these notes. Paraphrasing will be necessary when making the summary. In cases where sentences or phrases will need to be copied directly, they will need to be enclosed in quotation marks. One’s own thoughts should not be included in the summary.
Cirterionessays.com has thousands of custom written essays to help you in citation to avoid plagiarism. Just remember to properly cite al materials obtained from criterionessays.com.
FREE ESSAY SAMPLES
other links