A lot of people seem to think that plagiarism is relatively new and harmless as well. They don’t realize that it can damage a writer’s chances of growing in the writing business they are hoping for. It can also create the impression that you lack the originality and talent that you claim to have as a result of copying from other sources and using them in your article without giving proper credits to the original author, which could cause your reputation to drop significantly. It can also prevent you from getting that big break in the writing job you’ve been hoping to get. It can even lead to cases of misconduct, rift, creating an atmosphere of disrespect among writers on a platform. Plagiarism is a serious offense and it can be treated as such anywhere. If you have no experience with plagiarism, you may think it’s a small matter, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
What is plagiarism and how do you know you have committed it?
That's a million-dollar question I kept asking myself recently. What is plagiarism? How can you tell if you have plagiarized from an already existing material like Wikipedia, a book, or YouTube? The simple answer to this question lies in your integrity. If you find yourself doing or even thinking the following:
copying the text of a book or chapter and calling it your own.
making research observations that are not based on first-hand experience or real knowledge.
Falsifying a dubious piece of research as credible or true.
copying key phrases, rephrasing them, and identifying them as your own.
writing an article based on a second-hand source of ideas.
Basically, the plagiarism definition is broad enough to include pretty much anything that doesn't come from originality. The irony, of course, is that this definition includes a lot of things we can't do on Wikipedia.
It is common knowledge that there is no harm in any kind of re-writing of old texts or quoting somebody else's quotes in your work. Not only has it been seen in our society, but it has been well-known across the writing world. However, the problem is not copying, it is when a person tries to pass off his/her writing's as another writer by using their ideas, sources, citations, and vocabulary.
Plagiarism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source.: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source" especially for monetary profit or personal advantage.
Today, however, the widespread use of the Internet and social media make it possible to commit plagiarism through virtual means, for example, by copying another person's writing by using the person's words and views, representing in written form a movie without crediting the producer of such movie.
Another funny thing about plagiarism is that you can even plagiarize yourself, a common practice among many writers. Although this can sometimes be done unintentionally, yet it follows the same rules as with other forms of plagiarism.
You may think that you’re just a writer trying to write what you want to write. But once you start getting in the game, you’ll need to make sure that everything you do is what you truly believe.
Now let have a look at the types of plagiarism to ascertain your position and know how to avoid them.
Plagiarising authors
Plagiarising authors is a type of plagiarism where a writer takes all the work of another author and passes it on as his or her own. The other side of this type of plagiarism is when you get someone to write you an article and publish it as your job. That cheating and pure plagiarism.
This is a deliberate act and one of the worst forms of cheating, and it can have serious consequences.
Rephrasing of text from another source
Rephrasing of text means rewriting a piece of text in your own words. without quoting the source of those ideas.
Rephrasing others' words is not cheating as long as you state your sources correctly. However, rephrasing words from another source is cheating when you read the source and rewrite the main points as if they were your ideas.
A more worst case is when translating a piece of text from another language. This is a dubious way to cheat. If you have to translate a piece of text for your publication, you need to properly reference the source. Translation without a source is still cheating, as you are using someone else's ideas.
copy and paste
This is the most common plagiarism that everyone knows about, and needs no much explanation. You make a literal cheat when you directly copy any text from a source and paste it into your article. If the structure and plural of the words are the same as the original, then it means cheating, even if you remove or change a few words here and there.
If you want to use the author's direct words, you need to quote the source by placing the copied text in the quotation marks and including the text source.
Patchwork plagiarism
Patchwork plagiarism is also known as Mosaic plagiarism. This Involves the copying of phrases, paragraphs, and ideas from different sources and combining them to create a new article. This may include rephrasing roles while retaining many words and the same structure as the original.
This type of cheating requires more effort than simply copying and pasting a source, but some clever cheaters can easily do it.
Plagiarising yourself
This might seem funny to know, and maybe the first time you are reading about it. This is called self-plagiarism, a practice of reusing part of your older work or a job that you previously posted for publication. Although it is your work, it is considered dishonest to present your old article as brand new and you have already received credit for this work.
What’s worse is republishing an article you’ve already published as an opportunity to make more money with it without leaving a backlink to the original article. this is considered cheating.
Self-plagiarism can also occur if you use ideas, phrases, or information from your previous articles. The truth is that reusing old ideas and passages is no cheating on its own, but you should quote your previous work to make the background clear.
How to avoid all forms of plagiarism
If you are concerned about accidental plagiarism, you can use any of the free plagiarism checkers online before publishing your article. I recommend you use Grammarly which is a more accurate plagiarism detector than most other free checkers. You can also use smallseotolls.com, the software compares your document with sources and highlights any similarities or missing quotes.
This article is only a piece about plagiarism, to know more about the various types of plagiarism and how to avoid them, I recommend you check this link from which most of the information in this article was derived.
I like that a solution was given to avoid plagiarism because some people do not know that they are plagiarizing other people’s work.