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Plagiarism and Its Consequences

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Plagiarism and Its Consequences
Paula. J. Butler
National American University

The topic of plagiarism is mentioned often. But how much do you actually know about plagiarism? Do you know exactly what it is? What the consequences of it are? Or The different kinds? What about how to avoid it? This paper is going to help clear up any questions you may have about plagiarism.
Plagiarism is “the act of using another person's words or ideas without giving credit to that person : the act of plagiarizing something” ("Plagiarism." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 5 May 2015. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarism). Many people do not understand that using someone else’s words is an act of theft that has real life consequences. There is not only the chance of destroying your student, academic or professional reputation but a chance of legal repercussions as well. While an author always has the right to sue a person for plagiarism; some plagiarism can even be considered a criminal offense with the possibility of a prison sentence. There are many different types of plagiarism. The most common would be “clone”. “Clone is when you submit another’s work, word for word as your own. Remix is another kind of plagiarism when you paraphrase from multiple sources, making them fit together. A hybrid combines perfectly cited sources with copied passages without citation. Mixes of copied material from multiple sources is called a mashup” (http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/types-of-plagiarism/). There are many other kinds of plagiarism as well. You can help yourself avoid plagiarism by quoting all information you obtained from other resources such as website and books. There is also programs that you can purchase such as “writecheck”. “Writecheck” will highlight the matches it finds in your document and then provide a “similarity score” of

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