Why Plagiarism is Wrong By: Akshar Patel Plagiarism is essentially taking someone else’s work or ideas and taking false credit for them. Plagiarism can have many negative consequences because it denies credit of the person who actually did the work. It is basically stealing someone’s ideas and acting as if they are your own. One can take a paper off the internet and put their name on it, taking credit of work that they did not do. If someone uses a source from online or a book and does not cite it, it is considered plagiarism.
Even when one uses quotes from another source in their work but does not say where they received the information, it is also considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is looked upon as cheating and lying because the person who took the information from someone else did not actually do the work to deserve the credit. Plagiarism can also occur between students, not just from books and articles. For example, if a student wrote an essay and worked very hard on it and another student, who did not do any work, gets a hold of the essay and puts their name on it and hands it in, they took someone else’s work and took false credit for it.
Plagiarism does not just affect one’s grade; it impacts their future in a very negative way. Some of the dire consequences of plagiarism in college are failing the course, getting suspended, and even being permanently banned from the school. Cheating gives a person a bad reputation which does not help them when they are looking for a job during or after college. If a student copies of another student and they both hand in the work, the teacher will not know who actually did the work and who to give credit to so both students will receive a 0 n the assignment.
So not only does plagiarism affect oneself, it also jeopardizes someone else’s grade and ultimately, their future. If many students begin to do this, most students will not learn anything because they are not doing the work for themselves. This will defeat the purpose of school because students are supposed to learn things in school not copy off others and learn to cheat. Cheating is deemed dishonest and anyone who does this will be looked down upon. Not only that, it is also illegal to plagiarize.
To avoid plagiarism, there are some precautions one can take such as including a reference page or bibliography at the end of a paper which contains the sources used in the assignment. Using quotes and citing where you got them from is a good way to avoid plagiarism because quotes give credit to the source so it is not considered stealing. One of the most obvious ways to avoid plagiarism when typing a paper is to not copy and paste from articles and papers on the internet. Then there is always the moral aspect of it.
Plagiarism is perceived to be morally wrong and unacceptable due to the fact that it is basically cheating and stealing. It is not fair to the actual author of a paper if someone steals their words and ideas and takes credit for them. Even if the ideas are not word for word, as long as they have a similar idea, they must be cited. Changing the words around to make it sound different is still considered plagiarism because it contains someone else’s ideas. To make writing one’s own, they must change the words and the order of the words.
So if one is asked to summarize a piece of text or article, they must alter the words used in the article and also change the order of them. Summarizing is not the same as taking the important parts of the text and writing them in verbatim. Summarizing is taking the main points and putting them in your own words. So it is a shortened version of what is being summarized, for example an article. When asked to summarize what happened in certain chapters in books, one can simply describe the main/important events that took place without using the same words that the author used.
Students often plagiarize to help them get a better grade on an assignment but what they may not know is that plagiarism hurts them more than help. Most of the time, students will get caught plagiarizing but sometimes they do not which is why they do it. They believe they will be the one who will not get caught so they continue doing it. Sometimes students do not know that they are plagiarizing because they are unaware of what plagiarism actually is.
They may research a certain topic and use the research in an essay not knowing that what they are doing can get them into a lot of trouble. Also, students may not cite information correctly or forget altogether which will make their work contain plagiarism. Students may believe that there is nothing wrong with getting ideas from other sources to use on an assignment but this is a misconception because this is considered stealing. If they want to use ideas from other sources, they must cite where they got the information using quotes or a bibliography.
Many of the students who plagiarize are often afraid of receiving a bad grade on an assignment so they try to solve this problem by taking information from online or books and take credit for the work even though it is not actually their work. They believe that if they do this, they will receive a higher grade than they originally would have but this is almost never the case because they usually end up getting caught with plagiarism which is an automatic failure. In conclusion, plagiarism is wrong because it is stealing and dishonest.
One must give credit where it is due because the person who actually did the work needs to be recognized when their work is being used by someone else. Plagiarism is a form of cheating and should not be practiced because it is not right. The point of school is for students to learn so if they begin to cheat, they will not learn anything, which defeats the purpose of learning. There are many ways to avoid plagiarism which gives no excuse for students to continue to do it. All in all, plagiarism is unjust and should not be practiced due to its dishonesty.