Running Head: Avoiding Plagiarism 1

Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic Writing
Brian Butler
Coll100
Matthew Freed

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Citation is most important when trying to avoid the harsh but justifiable punishments for plagiarism. Commonly, when someone say plagiarism, we think, someone copied a paper word for word. What some people do not know is that there are many types of plagiarism. “Plagiarism is not always a black and white issue.” (1) To many people we often think its ok to take words from one person and use for yourself, why is that so wrong? Though, it’s not ok we don’t understand what the problem is. What really is plagiarism and how do we make sure we do not commit plagiarism in our papers? To clarify better, “Plagiarism: an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author:”. (2) That’s very to the point but here’s something else, if you read something and it’s not common knowledge, without citing the source yes, you have created plagiarism. When we hear the word punishment we don’t think of plagiarism being so serious, and yet the penalty for plagiarism can be very serious. Government laws enforce anywhere between a fine and/or incarceration of up to one year, this is a misdemeanor. Fines range from $100 to $50,000 dollars, depending on the situation. (3) The felony for plagiarism is more severe, depending on the profit the plagiarized material earned. The more you earn the more years of incarceration you get. American Public University Systems student handbook explains
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the different punishments for plagiarism, it states that your instructor gets to decide the first action if plagiarism was involved. (3) When the instructor finds it seriously plagiarized the turn it in to the school and it gets dock, then he/she can choose to fail you completely from the program or just the plagiarized assignment. Each time you get turned in for plagiarizing they get docked in your student account, till you reach four marks recorded for plagiarism leading to expulsion. Depending on the school, your punishment could be different most schools have a zero tolerance for plagiarism. Making sure you cite your paper is very important, however it’s not just about citing it’s also about what type of citation you need to use. There are close to twenty different types. They types most commonly used are in text citation, where we add the author and the date of the material was published, and then reference list. The reference list is a page that has a complete inventory of all the books, websites, and other types of articles. Both of these forms of citing are from the APA writing style. Citing in APA format makes research documenting quit and easy, with less chance of plagiarism. (4) Writing a research paper is very time consuming and trying to cite the reference that are used is not something we want to spend most of our time on, however we do not want to get caught plagiarizing either. There are some other things that need to be taken into consideration, such as, the difference in a bibliography and a reference page. Now a bibliography is more of influential list of authors, but that does not mean you have to, or have used any of the author’s text. Bibliographies are used in a MLA writing style. The reference page is used because, you
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have taken some information or quotes from someone else and you are notating that it was not common information. People tend to forget that when you use text from an article or a book you have to include the page number, this helps clarify where you got the direct quote from. (5)
Really there are so many ways to plagiarize and not to plagiarize it all depends on how you cite your paper. The best thing to do is plan what you want your research paper to be about and then look up the information. Make sure you take a lot of notes, and ask a teacher or instructor if you have any questions. If you can’t get ahold of an instructor cite what you have questions about. The internet makes looking up information much easier these days however, not all of the sites you get information from are credible. “For starters, make sure you know the author(s) of the page, where they got their information, and when they wrote it (getting this information is also an important step in avoiding plagiarism!” (1) When should we cite, simple any time you rewrite someone else’s words, it’s a must to cite the author in your paper. Most people do not take what they are writing from someone else as plagiarism even though in fact it is 100 percent plagiarism if they were not sure of the information before reading it. This does not mean that all information you have read is not something you may have retained in school long before rereading it for your paper. For some people facts stick in their minds and then when they come to use them there is no need to look up certain information. Information such as statistics, more than likely are barrowed from someone else so make sure that is cited. We all just have to remember if you read it and are going to write it, cite it. Avoiding Plagiarism 5

In conclusion, to stay out of trouble make sure all writing has been cited, and if you’re not 100 percent sure, there are many different websites that you can send your paper to, they will check and give you a report back on any mistakes in citation. The website mostly used here at APUS is turnitin.com. But there are more out there for usage. There needs to be more awareness of the disciplinary actions used if plagiarism is committed. APUS has a very fair policy for plagiarism that should be used nation wide, it give many chances to correct and stay clear of falling in to plagiarism temptations.

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Reference Page

(1) http://apps.carleton.edu (2) http://www.plagiarism.org (3) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism (4) http://www.apus.edu/student-handbook/adverse-actions/index.htm (5) http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocAPA.html (6) http://site.ebrary.com/lib/apus/docDetail.action?docID=10404007