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Marlon Brown
February 17, 2013
English 1102
Professor Chevallier

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of committing theft or pretending to be new or an original idea of
product derived from an existing source. In my own words that means using another persons
ideas, information, or expressions without acknowledging the persons work. Where is the line
drawn with plagiarism? Its a thin line and its very easy to cross. There are different types of
plagiarism on different levels. But theres one in particular that I can relate to and thats
plagiarism in college. The act of plagiarism can be committed on a few different levels; high
school, college, historians, scientists, and journalists as stated on page 311 of Practical
Argument. Plagiarizing can be very easy and unknowingly done.
I can understand how someone can unknowingly plagiarize. You can plagiarize from an
article that youve never even read before just because too many words in one sentence are the
same. But at the same time there are people that dont plagiarize by mistake. A lot of people
think if they just take a few sentences from an article they found on the internet that they arent
plagiarizing because they didnt use the whole article, but thats still plagiarizing. Lazy college
students often plagiarize because they forgot to do the assignment or they think the professor
wont notice. Plagiarism is wrong no matter if its one sentence or a whole essay. I personally
dont think that if you take a sentence or two from another source it should be considered
plagiarism but at the same time it could be, depending on how you look at it.
The act of plagiarizing can be as easy as misplacing your keys. Most people arent taught
what plagiarism is until its too late. Plagiarizing is wrong no matter how you put it. You should
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know that stealing someone elses ideas and passing them off as your own is wrong, but in some
cases people dont think what theyre doing is wrong or is the act of stealing ideas. They feel as
though theyre just using what someone else said as a way of explaining/representing what they
were thinking. You can always use someone elses idea as long as you use quotation marks in the
process. In the article The rules of Attribution by Deborah R. Gerhardt, a college student by
the name of Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarized Megan McCaffertys Sloppy Firsts and Second
Helpings unknowingly. So much in her novel was similar to McCaffertys that she was accused
of plagiarism and copyright infringement. In the article it stated that she told the New York
Times All I really want to do is apologize to Ms. McCafferty. I dont want her to think I
intended to cause her distress, because I admire her so much. Viswanathan explained how she
didnt intentionally plagiarize, and didnt think anything of it. Even though she didnt purposely
plagiarize the novel there was still a consequence because thats something she should have
known as a college writer.
Nobody ever thinks if they do plagiarize that theyll be caught or that the consequence
would be big because it isnt that big of a deal to them. Plagiarism is a big thing and the
argument of what it is or isnt can be argued for days. In college plagiarism is looked at as a
major crime and you can either get the easy way out which is receiving a zero on the assignment
or you can get the most crucial punishment which can result in you being kicked out of the
course. All in all, plagiarizing is wrong and illegal. Just as you wouldnt litter in front of a police
officer you shouldnt turn in a plagiarized paper to a professor. Besides, youre probable most
likely to get away with the littering before you get away with plagiarizing.

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Works cited:
Gerhardt, Deborah. "The Rules of Attribution." Chronicle Review. Chronicle Review, 26
May 2006.