There is a problem that is spreading, and not in our universities or schools, although it happens, but in our news and political venues. Areas where people should know this problem especially well, or at least enough, so as not to fall prey to this problem. This problem is plagiarism, plagiarism is a problem that occurs more frequently because students, sometimes teachers, journalists and speech writers more frequently in recent times ran out of time and took shortcuts or did not take notes well enough when researching to know when something is actually a direct quote, or not recognize when they are having an original thought rather than paraphrasing. In this article we will define plagiarism, in a way that will hopefully clearly illustrate what exactly plagiarism is. We will discuss research ethics, what intentional and unintentional plagiarism is. I will provide a couple of examples of recent authors plagiarizing and discuss the consequences of plagiarizing someone's work. Finally, we will discuss how not to fall prey to plagiarism in your papers, publications and speeches. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When we discuss plagiarism, the first thing we need to know is what exactly plagiarism is. Plagiarism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an act of copying another person's ideas or words without giving credit to that person.” This means that if the definition had been taken word for word and presented as the writer's personal definition, the writer would have committed an act of plagiarism. Furthermore, if the writer has no idea what plagiarism is, and then looked up the word and paraphrased ("...paraphrasing means rephrasing someone else's words in your own words") and presented it as your own definition, then again the writer would have engaged in an act of plagiarism. But wait, this means that if the writer works, for example, in a school, in a newspaper or in some other profession where he needs to be aware of what plagiarism is on a daily basis, then he must always remember where he got it from the definition? Well, it would be nice if they could, but no. Within some professions and subjects there are concessions for common knowledge. “Common knowledge is information that is widely known, such as the fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.” Definitions are one of those topics that don't ALWAYS need to be found, as they can be considered common knowledge. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that citing definitions and properly citing where you got it removes some if not all doubts the reader may have about the definition, and therefore improves the reader's view of your credibility. The essence of plagiarism at its root concerns the ethics of the writer and, above all, the ethics used while researching and writing an article. If a writer stops and honestly thinks to themselves, “Is this ethical, does it make you feel good (ignoring the feeling of relief of having finished it), or how would it feel if someone copied my work without giving me credit for the hard work I put in? I did?" put in?" These questions will only really help to stop the worst form of plagiarism; Intentional plagiarism, somewhat self-explanatory but for the sake of clarity Intentional plagiarism occurs when someone has taken someone else's work (published by definition ) and attempted to pass it off as his own work, in part or in whole. This is the one form of plagiarism that you cannot avoid except, remember that this is unethical and I should not do it!Accidental, this type of plagiarism is when someone typically doesn't take good enough notes, they didn't paraphrase adequately, or they believe the thought was 100% original when in reality it was a paraphrase of something they had read in the process of doing research for the article they are writing. We'll talk about ways to avoid accidental plagiarism later in this article. The last type of plagiarism we will discuss is much less well known, and actually a fairly new concept, and still widely debated, is self-plagiarism. The concept of self-plagiarism or at least the need to monitor and recognize it is so new that it had its first mention in the 2010, sixth edition of the American Psychological Association (APA). “Self-plagiarism is defined as a type of plagiarism in which the writer republishes a work in its entirety or reuses parts of a previously written text when creating a new work.” What, wait a minute, you can plagiarize yourself? But the definition of plagiarism says using someone else's work. Well yes, it's true, but here we have to think about two things: the first is the ethics of the thing. If I write a paper for Professor A and also turn it into Professor B for a different class is it ethically right? The ethics get a little fuzzy here, because it's your job, and some might say it's simply a good use of your time and resources to meet both requirements in one assignment. However, this will depend on two things: your school policy on self-plagiarism, if it has one, and whether your professors are both okay with you turning in the same paper for different classes. If you see an opportunity to do this and want to try it, you need to discuss it with both professors and make sure they are in agreement. The second thing we need to consider is whether the article will be published, if this is the case then there is a lot more to think about here, copyright infringement which we won't go into here and being published twice for a subject subject to Work. This second point is where some professors may have trouble if you use the same article twice. Sometimes, if you do well enough, they may want to post you, and even if they don't, they are trying to prepare you for the job market aka "The Real World". Where, for example, I were to have two jobs and somehow get an assignment from both, it would be the same job. Well, wow, that would just be a mess of conflict of interest and, more importantly, proprietary knowledge. This means that both companies will have a reasonable expectation that any work performed for them belongs to them and to no other company. By sharing it, you are violating not only the contract you signed, but perhaps even some laws. In this example your professors are your two bosses at the two different companies. Am I OK with you sharing this knowledge with a likely competitor? Maybe if it's not something critical to maintaining their edge in the market, they might not care, but chances are they will care and won't be willing to share the project. As might also be likely with your professors. Two of the biggest or perhaps most notorious plagiarists in recent news have been Melania Trump and Jayson Blair. In the case of Malania Trump, as you know, she is a political figure. So she, like many other political figures, did not write her own speech. What we are going to talk about today was written by one of your husband's collaborators, for you. When he spoke with staff about the direction and content of the speech, he had read passages from Michele Obama's speech and said he considered it an inspiration. The staff member took this information and wrote the speech and, although unintentionally, had parts that were almostverbatims of Michele Obama's speech. For the rapporteur this could have constituted a dismissal offense and the end of any political speaking career, and in fact the rapporteur offered to resign due to the mistake she made in not checking the speech she had written against that of Michele Obama, knowing she was used as inspiration. From a political point of view this act of plagiarism could have distracted from what Trump actually wanted to convey to his voters, and even if it did just that, the Trumps simply saw it as a mass free press. Plagiarism in the political world is something that actually happens quite frequently. Probably more than it really should, however this usually happens with allies, and allies usually don't mind if an ally borrows bits of their speech. Allies also share speechwriters, who can sometimes reuse work that shouldn't be reused. The reason Malania Trump's speech attracted so much attention, compared to many other plagiarism infractions in politics, is primarily because Hillary Clinton's team was trying to cast an unfavorable light on Trump's campaign. Furthermore, although Malania sees Michele as an inspiration, they were not political allies, and Democrats and Republicans seem to be quite territorial over there. This could have been much worse for Trump and the staffer who wrote the speech, all of this was simply swept away because there were more important issues that became prevalent over the course of the campaign. Case in point of how plagiarism can really ruin you and your loved ones. career. Jayson Blair, was a reporter for the New York Times, one of if not the most respected newspapers. He had a promising career and had worked for the newspaper for four years, all the while plagiarizing other newspapers, misquoting and making up facts. The New York Times saw this not only as a betrayal of trust on Jayson Blair's part, but as a fact that they themselves had betrayed readers by not grasping it sooner. Because of his actions not only has he lost all of his credibility, but the New York Times has also lost some of its credibility. With the loss of Jayson's credibility he was fired from the New York Times but will probably never work for another newspaper again. Now we know what plagiarism is and what some of the real-world consequences of committing this act can be. Let's now talk about how to avoid plagiarism. As mentioned earlier in this document, to avoid intentional plagiarism, we evaluate our actions against the ethics of what we are doing, or if your internal compass is so messed up that you still think it's a good idea, just don't do it. You may think you won't get caught, and you may not at first, but remember that Jayson Blair got away with it for 4 years. But he still got caught, and you will too eventually if you intentionally plagiarize. Ok, so let's agree not to plagiarize intentionally, but how can we avoid plagiarizing unintentionally. It's actually a bit of work, but worth it when compared to the alternatives. Avoiding this form of plagiarism starts as soon as you start taking notes. If you correct something you took from a paper, quote it word for word. Yes, even in your notes, this will allow you to more easily recognize that it is a quote and not a simple thought jotted down while you read up on the topic. With your quotes and any other notes, even paraphrased thoughts, you should note which article or book you pulled it from. The date you viewed or found the item and the page number on which you found it. This will help you.