Plagiarism
Tamara Alston
Liberty University

Abstract
This work will address the subject of plagiarism in writing. It describes the steps to writing an essay in APA style while suggesting to the student some ways avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism. The topics covered are APA formatting, quotations, paraphrasing, summarizing, citations, and references. APA formatting assures that your paper is set up correctly. Quoting, paraphrasing, and citing are ways to avoid plagiarism. Students usually commit plagiarism accidently, but it is still very serious and can be a life-changing event. A student can be suspended or dismissed for purposeful plagiarism. A student may also be charged with plagiarism is their writings are published and they were plagiarized. There is no reason to take a chance of being accused of plagiarism when there are so many ways to prevent it including programs that will check your work. Keywords: APA, formatting, quotations, paraphrasing, citations, references, plagiarism

When writing a paper in APA style, formatting is very important. APA style is the style most used for work in the area of the social sciences. An APA paper should be typed and double-spaced with one-inch margins. The preferred font is 12 pt. Times New Roman. Every page should have a page header including a running head even with the left margin and a page number even with the right margin (Angeli, Wagner, Lawrick, Moore, Anderson, Soderland, & Brizee, 2010). Plagiarism, by definition, is a crime that is punishable by our legal system. A person can be accused of plagiarism if they copy or paraphrase another person’s writings, art, or music and claim it as their own without giving credit to the original author or artist. According to the APA Ethics Code Standard 8.11, “Researchers do not claim the words and ideas of another as their own; they give credit where credit is due” (American Psychological Association, 2012, p.15). When writing, it is the expectation that the writer will give credit to the author of the work that they quoted, paraphrased, or even if the writing merely influenced their work (American Psychological Association, 2012). There is also a form of plagiarism called self-plagiarism, where a writer uses their previous work without letting the reader know or without citing it as previous work. The writer is essentially claiming that their work is new if it is not cited as previous work (American Psychological Association, 2012). Plagiarism has escalated as a problem in higher education because students are enrolled in more online programs. Students often do not realize that online information belongs to someone. Although their plagiarism is not on purpose, it is still a very serious academic infraction (Brussard & Hurst, 2015). All work belongs to someone, just as this work belongs to the author. There are many ways that students can prevent plagiarism in their writing assignments. Quotations can be used in writing to avoid plagiarism. There are two types of quotations: direct quotes and block quotes. A direct quote is placed between quotation marks and contains fewer than 40 words. Direct quotations must be exactly like the work being quoted. Quotations are used when it is necessary to use the author’s exact words to maintain the meaning and effect of the passage. A blocked quote contains 40 or more words and is started on a new line. It should be indented one half of an inch from the left margin and double-spaced throughout the quote. Always cite at the end of the quote including the author(s), year, and the page or paragraph. In a direct quote the period comes after the citing, with a blocked quote the citing comes after the period (American Psychological Association, 2012). Quotations should be kept to a minimum and most times the instructor will limit the number of Quotations a student can use in one assignment. Written permission may be needed when using someone else’s work exactly as they wrote it or if you use long quotes. A writer must find out if written permission is needed to quote. The author can contact the publisher or the copyright owner (American Psychological Association, 2012). Paraphrasing is another way to avoid plagiarism. Paraphrasing is taking someone else’s idea and putting it in your own words. The key to paraphrasing is to use your own words without changing the meaning of the text. Even if the writer paraphrases, the author of the original work still has to be given credit for their work. Writing a summary is a better choice for covering long passages than paraphrasing (Trokyo & Hesse, 2010). Citations can be used to avoid plagiarism. Citations give credit to the authors that are quoted and paraphrased. Citations also give credit to the author who gave the writer an idea or influenced their work (American Psychological Association, 2012). Using APA style, works are cited in text and are found in the reference list. The references are listed in alphabetical order (American Psychological Association). Citations should include the name of the author, or authors, and the title of the work being used. Information about the publisher and the date published should be included in the citation. When citing a quotation, the page number should also be given to ensure that the reader could locate the passage quoted (plagiarism.org, n.d.). Reference citations are the final step to ensuring that a writer avoids plagiarism. References give credit to those who deserve credit and make it easier for the reader to locate the origin of the research. The reference list should be started on a new page. The title References should be centered on the top line with only the first letter capitalized. The reference page should be double-spaced in its entirety. The first line of every entry should be even with the left margin and every line after should be indented. This is called a hanging indent format (American Psychological Association, 2012). Liberty University Online Honor Code specifically addresses plagiarism as a student purposefully not giving credit to another whose work they quoted, paraphrased, or copied when their intention was to fool the reader. If the professor suspects plagiarism, they will initiate an investigation by issuing a sanction. The online associate dean is in charge of the investigation and the decision if the sanction was warranted or not. The professor may give the student an F on the assignment, adjust their grade, or require further work to be done. The penalty for plagiarism that is found to be blatantly purposeful is that the student will receive an F as a course grade. If it is found not to be on purpose, the student may still receive an F for the assignment. If a student receives an F for academic dishonesty, they have five days to submit a written appeal to the decision to the proper authorities. There is a chain of command that needs to be followed when appealing. The chain of command starts with the professor. Students may be suspended or dismissed from Liberty University for acts of retaliation against anyone who reports in good faith. Examples of retaliation are skipping the chain of command, communicating threats of any kind, harassment, verbal or physical abuse, being disrespectful to a member of the staff, communicating offensively, or purposefully accusing someone of academic dishonesty.
If a student receives a second F for academic dishonesty, the student will be dismissed from the university and must wait five years for readmission. The student may be denied readmission to the same program from which they received the academic dishonesty (LUO, 2011). As it has been made clear by research, plagiarism is a very serious academic infraction that can result in a student being dismissed from school and being legally charged with a crime. Although most students guilty of plagiarism didn’t plan to do it, there are many websites and programs that can be used by the student to assure that they are safe from the accusations of plagiarism. Some programs are free but there are others that a student must pay for in order to use their plagiarism checking services. Students can use the Safe Assign Link found on Liberty University Online Website.

References
American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. ISBN: 9781433805615
Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., Brizee, A. (2010, May 5).

General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Broussard, L. (2015). Plagiarism prevention and detection. Nurse educator, 40, 1. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0000000000000147
Liberty university online honor code (2011). LU-online-honor-code.pdf plagiarism. (n.d.). Collins english dictionary- complete & unabridged (10th ed.).
Retrieved September 24, 2015, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism Trokyo, L. Q. & Hesse, D. (2010). Quick access reference for writers (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
What is plagiarism? (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2015, from <http://plagiarism.org/citing- sources/whats-a-citation>