Plagiarism: Home

Plagiarism refers to the use of another's ideas, information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism)

• Plagiarism is the use of someone else's words, ideas, pictures, design, and/or intellectual property without the correct documentation and punctuation.
• Plagiarism takes many forms: for example, turning in the same essay for two different courses is considered self-plagiarism and will result in a zero for the paper. You may legitimately wonder how anyone would ever know; this is one of the purposes of the SafeAssign plagiarism scan.
• All work submitted for credit in any class must be the product of the individual student's own original thoughts supported and informed by appropriately documented and credited sources.

Plagiarism is morally indefensible. Any assignment showing signs of plagiarism, either the:

1. Deliberate cut-and-paste of online or print sources
2. Recycling of essays from previous classes
3. Essays written on behalf of the student by family members or friends, or third parties, such as professional essay writing services
4. The result of inattention and incompetence
5. Paraphrasing large sections based on the ideas of another source...even if you put it into your own words will be graded zero. 

(Source: https://valenciacollege.edu/academics/departments/arts-humanities-west/writing/plagiarism.php)

Image retrieved from http://libguides.butler.edu/plagiarism.

• Here is a good rule: It is better to be safe than sorry in academic writing. Always cite your sources. A person's ideas are their intellectual property. You wouldn't go into another student's backpack and steal their property. Plagiarism is stealing the ideas of another person and passing them off as your own without giving them credit.
  • This includes paraphrasing or summarizing, as well as cut and paste.
  • Cutting and pasting large sections of text, even when you cite your sources, does not represent college level, original writing.
• If you have to look something up for your paper, cite your sources in text, and in your works cited page.
• Even if you summarize, give the author of the ideas credit.

(Source: https://valenciacollege.edu/academics/departments/arts-humanities-west/writing/plagiarism.php)

Valencia College's Plagiarism 101 tutorial will help you define plagiarism, identify the purpose of citations, and identify ideas for how to avoid plagiarism.

Valencia College takes plagiarism very seriously. If you plagiarize, you will risk failing the assignment/exam or the entire course. 

Below is Valencia College's Academic Dishonesty policy, which describes the procedures if anyone is observed in an act of academic dishonesty.

Why should you cite your sources?

• So you avoid plagiarism. By citing, you let your reader know what words and ideas are yours and what was borrowed from someone else.

Valencia College's Writing Center will help students at any stage of the writing/learning process. They go over English language assignments with students from all disciplines and all courses, college wide.

Plagiarism is a question of right or wrong behavior and it falls under normative ethics, which are the moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. Learn more about ethics and plagiarism at the link below.