Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices

This expression discusses the issues surrounding plagiarism and providing detail into what plagiarism is and identifying how it can be regulated in an attempt to address this growing educational concern. The article describes plagiarism as an act when a writer deliberately uses individual elses language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its spring (Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism, 2003). The nigh common problems with regard to plagiarism lie in distinguishing plagiarism from misdirect of sources.Plagiarism, as defined previously, is the use of anothers ideas without attri simplying it to its source, firearm pervert of sources, is the failure to properly attribute the ideas to its source (Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism, 2003). The difference is that in plagiarism, a person attempts to take credit for anothers idea while in misuse of sources, a person attempts to give credit to the source but fails to do this in the proper manner or format.The reasons that students normally commit one error or another can be attributed to students difficulties with the integration of the information into their work, students failure to properly schedule research material, or simply be ignorant of the mistakes because of various teaching backgrounds (Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism, 2003).Whatever the causes for these mistakes, the difficult part for the educators is in discerning the intent of the writer in using the sources in order to determine whether or not in that location was merely a simple misuse of sources or a strident attempt at plagiarism. Students may simply not be awake(predicate) that what has been done is already plagiarism or has attempted to plagiarize but cleverly disguises it as a simple misuse of sources. The key wherefore to addressing this educational problem lies in making sure students understand the relevancy of proper citation in their work.