Whenever you read a text, watch a film, or listen to music, you are internalizing copyrighted content. Oftentimes when writing an essay, you have to reference materials written by others to support your stance. When you do this, you must reference the work you received the information from. Failure to do is known as plagiarism.
Plagiarism is copying another person's facts, ideas, or words without acknowledging the original source of that information. Plagiarism is illegal. In most colleges and universities it is grounds for expulsion from those centers of education.
Something more serious than being kicked out of a college or university is having a lawsuit filed against you by the copyright owner whose work you had copied. You would then need to appear in court to defend yourself. Unless you can prove you did not infringe on the creator's copyright, you will be found guilty.
If you are branded as a plagiarist, you can lose all credibility in your field and among your peers. People will no longer regard you as being a professional; they will see you more like a thief of information.
What can you do to prevent yourself from plagiarizing? First, you must reference where you received the original information. In writing essays, depending on certain factors, you would use either the MLA, APA, or any of several other methods of parenthetical referencing. Each of the various forms of parenthetical referencing have their own rules governing how they are to be used.
If you are planning on using someone's spoken words verbatim, you would use quotations to denote that you are using this person's exact words. It would also be acceptable to denote who exactly was saying those words. Paraphrasing is taking someone's words and putting them into your own words. Paraphrasing another person's words would also be in need of referencing, as well as denoting in the essay that it is a paraphrasing of another person's words, and also listing who originally said that phrase or statement.
Commonly, when you reference a source, you list a marker in the text that a piece of material has come from another source, or at the end of the sentence. Some forms of parenthetical referencing has you list the author's last name and the page number the source came from. Then at the end of the essay there would be a bibliography or works cited page listing all of the sources used in either the order used or in alphabetical order by author's last name. Each different form of parenthetical referencing has its own rules and regulations. Check your handbook for whichever form of referencing you wish to use. Also, you cannot use different forms of referencing in the same essay.
Granted, there are several categories of items that do not require referencing for several reasons. These reasons include items in the public domain, materials that are unable to be copyrighted, such as phone books or documents created by the government. Facts that are commonly known are also accepted, such as the fact that the sky is blue or that Barack Obama is the President of the United States.
However, even if a work is in the public domain, it would still be a good idea to reference that work to avoid being accused of plagiarism. The same goes for materials created by the government. Always give your readers the opportunity to read the source for your information. Even if you think it's a trivial matter.© ResearchCopyright.com
