Butler University Plagiarism Tutorial: Home

What is Plagiarism?
 

In the Butler Student Handbook section on Academic Integrity, this definition of plagiarism is presented:

“Plagiarism is the fraudulent misrepresentation of any part of another person’s work as one’s own. Submitting any writing, including take-home exams, that does not properly acknowledge the quoting or paraphrasing of another person’s words, or that fails to give proper credit for another person’s ideas, opinion, or theory is plagiarism. Any unacknowledged use of sources to which one is indebted including but not limited to, music, video, audio, theatre projects, compositions, website, and computer software constitutes plagiarism.”
 

A shorter definition is presented by the national Writing Program Administrators association, “In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledg­ing its source. This definition applies to texts published in print or on-line, to manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers.” If you knowingly submit work that is not your own while claiming otherwise, that is plagiarism.

Examples of this include:

• Making no effort to distinguish your own ideas from the ideas or words borrowed from another source
• Buying a paper from a website or another student
• Copy/pasting materials from a source and making no effort to cite that information
• Borrowing another student’s paper to submit for the assignment

The key point to remember is that when you submit a paper or another project to be graded, you are saying that it is your work and your ideas. However, a simple mistake such as forgetting an in-text citation (but having the source in a bibliography) is a misuse of sources. Plagiarism is a failure to present your own work while a misuse of sources is a more common mistake that you will likely make (or have made) while learning to write papers at a the university level.