Use of secondary material is not a sign of weakness or of a lack of originality, but rather demonstrates good research skills and a willingness to learn as much as possible about the topic. It shows a realization that criticism and scholarship is a conversation among writers interested in the same subjects, and indicates your willingness to participate in that conversation on an equal footing with more experienced researchers.
Failure to indicate how you have used such material, on the other hand, is dishonest, dangerous, and violates the fundamental principles of interdependence and mutuality which lie at the root of all scholarship. Plagiarism is theft—and so it’s treated as a crime. As with any crime, ignorance is no excuse. There are no “grey areas” in plagiarism. You’ve either been honest in your work or you haven’t.
As teachers, academics see plagiarism as a student’s failure to accept responsibility for his or her education: PLAGIARISM INSULTS THE PROFESSOR AS AN INSTRUCTOR. As researchers and writers, academics are vulnerable to having their own work plagiarised—so their sympathies lie entirely with the VICTIM of plagiarism—the original source: PLAGIARISM INSULTS THE PROFESSOR AS A SCHOLAR. Moreover, any sympathy that a professor might have with the plagiarist is beside the point: the academic code of conduct doesn’t give the instructor any discretion over penalties. There’s a series of procedures that automatically begin as soon as plagiarism is recognised.
IT’S BETTER TO SUBMIT A WEAK PAPER OR NO PAPER AT ALL THAN IT IS TO PLAGIARISE.
It’s obvious that if you’re directly quoting a secondary source you MUST credit that source—whether you’ve copied a paragraph or just a single word (e.g. an adjective that wouldn’t have occurred to you or a technical term). The rules may be less obvious when you paraphrase or summarise secondary material.
Paraphrasing means expressing someone else's ideas in your own language. Summarising means concentrating only the most essential points of someone else's work. Paraphrase and summary allow you to include other people's ideas without cluttering up your essay with unnecessary quotations. Consider relying on either tool when an idea from one of your sources is important to your essay but the wording is not.
Considerations of space will guide your choice between summary and paraphrase. Consider how much of the detail from your source is relevant to your argument. If all your reader needs to know is the bare bones, then summarize.
Ultimately, be sure not to rely too heavily on either paraphrase or summary. Your ideas are what matter most. Allow yourself the space to develop those ideas. A list of properly cited references is not an essay.
This discussion refers to an exercise that was prepared by Malcolm Woodland, Department of English, U of T.
If you consult published material when preparing an assignment, you MUST indicate exactly how this work has influenced your essay.
1. First, you must include in your list of “Works Cited” an entry for every publication you refer to in the course of your essay.
2. Then, you must ensure that every quotation or paraphrase from each such work is followed by a parenthetical reference to the relevant publication listed in the “Works Cited.”
If the work in question has influenced your essay, it will be appropriately acknowledged therein through referenced quotations and/or paraphrases.
If a work influences your essay you must cite it, and I recommend that you prepare lists of “Works Consulted” rather than lists of “Works Cited,” to refer to all of your research, including material that doesn’t end up being directly relevant—that perhaps provides background or related material that isn’t precisely “on topic.”
list every source you’ve read or taken notes on that if it’s relevant to your finished paper, including works that you haven’t quoted or that haven’t influenced your thinking: for example, an article whose ideas you reject, or an article which only reinforces ideas that you’ve found in other sources that are more important to your discussion. That way, you’ll have more accurate records of your research and you’ll reduce the risk of confusing your own ideas with ideas you’ve come across. This practice also removes the temptation to quote without citing due to time constraints. If, in later drafts, you change your mind and decide to refer to these “consulted” articles, you’ll already have the necessary publication information recorded.
It goes without saying that the submission of work that makes unacknowledged use of unpublished material written by any person other than yourself (i.e. a friend or a person to whom you have paid money for such work) constitutes plagiarism. In some cases, plagiarism is more subtle. The following examples all involve the misuse of published material that would constitute plagiarism, based on material provided by Professor Woodland to U of T’s Office of Teaching Advancement.
All
of these examples use the sentence from Prof.
Woodland’s doc., which is linked to the main page of the class website. The
sentence comes from a book by Richard Giannone called
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
Throughout her contriving, the grandmother couches self-interest in a language of morals that shifts responsibility onto others.
Now, here are seven different ways in which a student might plagiarize this passage:
Method #1: No Acknowledgement for Direct Quotation
A student has written the following two sentences as part of an essay. The essay does not contain a list of “Works Cited”:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. Throughout her contriving, the grandmother couches self-interest in a language of morals that shifts responsibility onto others.
This is plagiarism, since the author’s words have been copied exactly from the source, and at no time is the author of that source acknowledged.
Method #2: Bibliographic entry without cited quotation or cited quotation with bib. entry
This time, the student has written the same two sentences shown in version #1, but has included an entry for the source of the second sentence in his/her list of “Works Cited,” which would normally be placed at the very end of the paper):
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. Throughout her contriving, the grandmother couches self-interest in a language of morals that shifts responsibility onto others.
Works Cited
Giannone, Richard.
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
The student has still committed plagiarism, since the reader has no idea that the second sentence in the given passage has come from this source. You must separate all quotations from your own text by placing the quoted material within quotation marks or, in the case of longer quotations, by indenting the entire quotation; and it is essential that the quotation be followed by a parenthetical reference to the source of the quotation. If you use a list of “Works Cited” as opposed to a list of “Works Consulted,” then you MUST directly refer to each entry on your list at some point in your essay.
Method #3: False Paraphrase
The student has indicated the source and page number of the quotation in a parenthetical reference after the borrowed sentence, and given the details about the source in the list of “Works Cited”:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. Throughout her contriving, the grandmother couches self-interest in a language of morals that shifts responsibility onto others (Giannone 48).
Works Cited
Giannone, Richard.
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
The student has still plagiarized the passage, since s/he has failed to place quotation marks around the sentence. The student is thus falsely claiming these words to be his/her own paraphrase of the source.
Method #4: Synonymous Phrasing as Paraphrase
This student has provided what she claims to be a paraphrase of the passage, and given a parenthetical reference to the source listed in the “Works Cited”:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. For example, she disguises personal wants in a language of ethics that redirects accountability onto others (Giannone 48).
Works Cited
Giannone, Richard.
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
This is plagiarism, because the paraphrase is not a true paraphrase; it follows the exact sentence structure of the original sentence, and does not represent the student’s own interpretation of what the critic in question is saying. The student has done no original thinking.
Method #5: Reordered Syntax as Paraphrase
Again, the student has provided what s/he claims to be a paraphrase of the passage, and given a parenthetical reference to the source listed in the “Works Cited”:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. For example, she uses a language of morals in which to couch self-interest,and thereby shifts responsibility onto others throughout her contriving (Giannone 48).
Works Cited
Giannone, Richard.
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
This sample is still not a true paraphrase; the student has merely rearranged the structure of the original sentence. The student has done no original thinking or writing.
Method #6: No acknowledgement for paraphrase
Here’s another paraphrase, and this time the student has really used his/her own words and sentence structure:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. She is extremely manipulative, and, rather than expressing her desires honestly as desires, she transforms them into a series of moral imperatives which others ignore at the risk of being found wanting.
However, the student failed to include a parenthetical reference to Giannone’s book (which s/he also failed to include in the list of “Works Cited”).
Method #7: Incomplete acknowledgement for paraphrase
Same paraphrase as above, but with one difference:
The grandmother seems at first to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. She is extremely manipulative, and, rather than expressing her desires honestly as desires, she transforms them into a series of moral imperatives which others ignore at the risk of being found wanting.
Works Cited
Giannone, Richard.
Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love.
Unfortunately, the list of “Works Cited” does not save the student from the charge of plagiarism, since there is no parenthetical reference to indicate that the second sentence of the passage in question is a paraphrase. And, of course, any dishonest paraphrase (as in versions 4 and 5) without both a parenthetical reference and an entry for the source in the “Works Cited” would similarly constitute a case of plagiarism.