A Student's Guide to Plagiarism, Copyright, and Fair Use: Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an intentional, or unintentional, instance of reproducing words, thoughts or data from another source, but claiming it as your own.

It is intentional. Some people copy from someone else and try to pass it off as their work. This has the intent of getting credit for the ideas presented.
It is unintentional. Even if you intended to cite the work, but “forgot”, you are still guilty of plagiarism.
That being the case, intent is not important to plagiarism. You either committed plagiarism or you didn’t.

Plagiarism is the reproduction of words, thoughts or data. It does not have to be an exact quote. If you paraphrase, summarize, or just give the gist of an idea, you must cite the source. If you quote as little as two words from a source, you must cite your source. If those two words are enough to get the reader to think of the source material, it must be cited. Notice also, this is not just a quotation of words, but even just the idea. Now, if the idea is common knowledge (judged by the people in your field of study), then common knowledge does not have to be cited.

It is information that comes from another source. Whatever source it is, it must be cited. If it comes from a book, an article, a lecture, an interview, or even a website, it must be cited. That’s right, even if your information comes from a website, it must be cited. A source is a source. Even if you don't want your instructor knowing you used Wikipedia, you still must cite it; it is the resource you chose to use.

All of this hinges on the idea that you are claiming it as your own. If there is no citation, the assumption is that you are the originator of the idea or data. Again, intentionality has nothing to do with plagiarism. If you fail to cite, for whatever the reason, you are committing plagiarism.

Citation of sources is a moral, ethical, and legal issue.

Legally, the creator/author of information owns the information. Copyright law protects the creator/author. If you commit plagiarism, you may be in violation of copyright law. As a student you probably don’t have to worry, but if the violation is extreme, there are consequences. Violators can be sued, or in extreme instances, sent to jail. Citing sources is a legal matter.

Ethically, the creator is the owner of the work and deserves credit for their hard work. To not cite your source, then takes away ownership; it is stealing their intellectual property. Universally, we like to give credit to people that do hard work. To not cite your source it to take away the credit or honor that is due to the author/creator.

Morally, the work and credit belong to the creator. Here, at a Christian college, we are impressed by God, in the book of Exodus, “you shall not steal.” When we plagiarize we are violating the 8th commandment, we are stealing; we are guilty of theft of intellectual property.

Plagiarism is a legal, ethical, and moral issue. The only real solution to the issue, is to give proper credit to your sources. A bad citation is better than a missing citation. A bad citation may mean a lower grade. A missing citation will result in a penalty ranging from an earned “F” on the assignment up to dismissal from the college.

Again, the only solution to plagiarism is citing your sources. The safest way, is to cite your sources while you take notes and while you write the paper, not after.