How to Write Better Essays

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30 Plagiarism

In this chapter you will learn:

• about the dangers of plagiarism and how to avoid them;


• how to decide when you need to cite sources and when you don’t
  need to – the six-point code;


• how to organise yourself to lessen the chances of plagiarism.

By definition the research we undertake to write an essay involves us

in borrowing material in one form or another. So, before we pack away

our notes, relieved that we’ve done most of the hard work, we need to

remind ourselves that we have certain ethical responsibilities to meet.

We have an obligation to acknowledge all those who have helped us

by giving us material in the form of ideas, quotations, figures and anec-

dotes. Failure to do this will mean we have committed just about the

worst form of academic dishonesty.

What is plagiarism exactly?

There can’t be many students at universities who are unaware of the

meaning of this. But still there are things we do that we don’t always

recognise as plagiarism.^1 Therefore, we ought to have a clear idea of

the various activities this includes. In its simplest form it is the attempt

to present someone else’s ideas or arguments as your own. This might

be using an idea you’ve read in one of your sources without acknowl-

edging it, copying paragraphs directly into your own work without

quotation marks or a reference, or just quoting from a paper without

quotation marks, even though you may have cited the paper appropri-

ately elsewhere. In effect it involves any activity which amounts to you

taking credit for work that is someone else’s.

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