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Plagiarism: Types of Plagiarism

Types of Plagiarism

There are different types of plagiarism:  intentional, unintentional, and self-plagiarism.

  • Intentional plagiarism is the deliberate use of text or other copyrighted materials copied into a paper without attribution.
  • Unintentional plagiarism is the most common mistake. This involves:
  • forgetting to cite a quotation
  • failure to mark a quotation as a direct quote
  • improperly summarizing or paraphrasing content
  • improperly citing a resource
  • Self-plagiarism is using work which you have written for one class and turning it in for credit in another class.  Always speak to your instructor if you want to use a project from one class as a basis for another project.
 

Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge does not have to be cited.  It is information most people will know. 

For example:
  • There are 24 hours in a day.
  • Thomas Jefferson was a US President
  • Brazil is a country in South America

Comon Knowledge is dependent upon your audience.  The common knowledge of a specialized group will be different from a group of average people.

10 Common Methods of Plagiarism

  1. Submitting another’s work, word-for-word, as one’s own

  2. Contains significant portions of text from a single source without alterations

  3. Changing key words and phrases but retaining the essential content of the source

  4. Paraphrases from multiple sources, made to fit together

  5. Borrows generously from the writer's previous work without citation

  6. Combines perfectly cited sources with copied passages without citation

  7. Mixes copied material from multiple sources

  8. Includes citations to non-existent or inaccurate information about sources

  9. Includes proper citation to sources but the paper contains almost no original work

  10. Includes proper citation, but relies too closely on the text's original wor4king and/or structure

(from https://www.plagiarism.org)

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