Varieties of Academic Offenses involving Written Work Assignments:
A Guide for Students and Instructors

Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo

Categories other than plagiarism (defined as varieties of cheating):

Submission of work not written and prepared by you.

Copying or stealing the work of another student.
Paying for the creation of work by a commercial service or by an acquaintance to be submitted by you
Purchasing already existing written work.
Using an essay for submission by you which was found on one of the free internet essay. sitesWriting a paper for course submission by another student.
Submitting the same paper to more than one course without the permission of all instructors.

Plagiarism:

Definition from Policy #71: "...the act of presenting the ideas, words, or other intellectual property of another as one's own. The use of other people's work must be properly acknowledged and referenced in all written material....Use of [source material] without complete and unambiguous acknowledgment...is an offense under this policy."

It is important to understand that plagiarism is not an offense limited to the world of school or university. Theft of intellectual property and violation of copyright are offenses in the "real world" too, offenses that can and do result in lawsuits.

ï Types and varieties of plagiarism include (but are not limited to) the following:

ï Word-for word use of part or all of an article, book, chapter, or other written work, without quotation marks, and/or without citation (referencing through footnotes or endnotes or parenthetic citations) of the source, and/or without a bibliography (or with no bibliography apart from that presented by the source itself).
ï Word-for-word use of text spans (phrases, sentences, paragraphs, longer segments) patched together from two or more sources, without quotation marks, and/or without citation of the source, and/or without a bibliography (or with only a partial bibliography).
ï Word-for-word use of source materials, without quotation marks, and/or without citation (either parenthetic or in note form) of the sources, and/or without a bibliography (or with only a partial bibliography).
ï Word-for-word use of source materials, with some text is enclosed by quotation marks and provided with citations, but with other text not identified as quoted, and/or not cited; and/or without a bibliography (or with only a partial bibliography).
ï Combination of word-for-word use from sources with close paraphrases of source texts, with accurate use of quotation marks and citations (note or parenthetic) to identify word-for-word use, but without citations to identify paraphrases and summaries; and/or without a bibliography (or with only a partial bibliography).
ï Giving a citation for only the first or the last sentence in a paragraph, even though the rest of the paragraph also contains material in need of direct attribution.
ï In summary:

ï A complete and accurate bibliography constitutes only one part of the fulfillment of the requirement for complete and unambiguous acknowledgment of sources. A very large proportion of plagiarized papers do have perfectly or nearly adequate bibliographies.
ï If the paper's reader has to go to (or hunt for), and has to look directly at, the text of the source in order to identify where the student's own thoughts and words end and the source's thoughts and words begin, then the paper is plagiarized.
ï If the writer of the paper does not include utterly explicit, direct, and complete indications of where the writer ends and the source begins (i.e., through accurate citations in notes or parentheses and through quotation marks wherever called for), then the paper is plagiarized.
ï If the footnotes/endnotes/parenthetic citations do not fully clarify the nature and the extent of the use of the source material, then the paper is plagiarized.

ï Commonly heard but unacceptable defenses of plagiarism:

ï "I'm only an undergraduate student, I can't be expected to come up with original ideas, so I copied everything from books and websites. I can't help it if that's plagiarism."

No. The plagiarism doesn't lie in the use of other people's ideas, words, etc.; it lies in not acknowledging your use of them appropriately.

ï "I don't have to give citations or use quotation marks if my source is something that was written by the course professor. After all, s/he is perfectly aware of the source."

No. It is the student's knowledge which is at issue, not the professor's.

ï "If I am working with source material which was specified and required by the paper assignment, I don't have to give citations/use quotation marks. The professor already knows what the source material is."

No. Same comment. The professor's knowledge in no way eliminates the student's responsibilities towards the source material.

ï "I took this material from the course text ­ it doesn't need to be cited the way you have to cite other sources."

No. All works must be appropriately acknowledged.

ï "I have included a bibliography. That covers me, and I haven't committed plagiarism. I'm not required to do anything more than that. If, for some reason, the professor really wants to know how I used my sources, then s/he can use my bibliography entries to check things out."

No. The student's responsibilities toward the source material have not been fulfilled unless, in addition to the List of Works Cited (bibliography), s/he has also provided entirely complete attributions (citations and, where needed, quotation marks) of each and every quotation, paraphrase, summary, and allusion to words, ideas, thoughts, and other intellectual property of all sources.
ï "The paper which I presented was just a preliminary draft. Therefore, it did not need to include any source information or footnotes. That's not necessary until the final draft."

No. No matter what the stage of preparation, the work which you submit or present must provide a faithful record of all source usage.

ï "The assignment asked for an entertaining presentation. If it's supposed to be entertaining, then it's not serious; and, if it's not serious, it doesn't need to have source information included."

Wrong. Comedy constitutes intellectual property too. All ideas, thoughts, and intellectual properties of other people are equally covered by the requirements of responsible source usage. If you find a joke website and use its material in your course assignment, you must give adequate citation to the website.

ï "I don't have to give citations if I am using entirely my own words to summarize or to paraphrase points made by the source."

Wrong. It is not merely the specific words of the source which demand responsible citation. The ideas and thoughts ­ the intellectual property in general ­ of the source also, and equally, demand responsible citation.

ï "I gave every citation that was called for ­ my paper is full of footnotes. I don't need quotation marks."

Wrong. Whenever you use the direct words and phrases employed by the source author, you have to give recognition to this with quotation marks. Otherwise, you may not be committing theft of ideas, but you are committing theft of expression.

ï "My friend who typed/did the inputting of the paper for me forgot to include the quotation marks and/or footnotes. This isn't plagiarism because I'm not responsible for my friend's errors."

Wrong. The person who submits the work bears direct responsibility for it in all of its aspects.

ï "I found one of the sources I used on a website. There was no author listed, so I don't need to give a citation; and anyway, I don't know how to cite web material."

Wrong. No matter what kind of source you use, where it comes from, or whatever difficulty you may encounter in finding full information about it, you must give appropriate recognition to it. There are style guides available to give you guidance in citing web material.

ï "I've lost some/all of my research notes for the paper, so I can't say where everything comes from; but I haven't committed plagiarism because all of that stuff was there in my research notes."

Sorry. The source information must be in the paper and must be submitted with the paper.

ï "I copied some material from a source into the page margins of the course textbook. Then I forgot that it came from a source. After that I put it into something I submitted for the course. I didn't really mean to be misleading."

Sorry. Careless study habits and practice can get you into trouble. You do bear responsibility for what you write and what you submit.

ï "I can't be guilty of plagiarism, because this is the way I've always written my papers, in high school and/or in my other university courses, and no one ever told me there was anything wrong with it."

Sorry. The fact that earlier instructors failed to detect or correct what you were doing doesn't mean that it wasn't/isn't plagiarism.

ï "This can't be plagiarism because I know I'm not the type to do that//I didn't pay any attention to what the instructor or course outline said about plagiarism because I didn't need to since I knew that it didn't apply to me//you can't penalize me for plagiarism because I'm just not that type of person."

Sorry. Everyone is capable of making mistakes. No one is immune. Very good people do make mistakes. In nearly every instance, however, a UW undergraduate student who makes a first academic offense is granted the opportunity of a second chance. Most students who make a first offense never commit another one. You learn from the mistake, and then you go on. A very large proportion of undergraduate students who have had disciplinary judgments do later attain honorable graduation from UW (even, sometimes, on the Dean's Honours List).

ï "This can't be counted as plagiarism because I didn't have an intention to be dishonest// because I didn't know that it was plagiarism."

Sorry. The mistake is there, whether or not there was an actual intention to deceive. When relevant, however, the issue of levels of intent may be taken into account in the rendering of a disciplinary decision.
Addendum to Guidelines for the avoidance of plagiarism in written assignments:

The offense of plagiarism - the theft of intellectual property - is not restricted to traditional written assignments such as essays. It can occur in other kinds of academic assignments as well: oral, musical, and artistic. The same rules hold: use of the intellectual property of another requires appropriate citation. Following are a few very broad guidelines for avoidance of plagiarism in presentations that are not restricted to the written word. It is extremely important for students to note that they should consult with their course instructor in disciplines that require assignments such as these; specific rules may obtain that are not referenced here.

Oral presentations (e.g., speeches):

ï Acknowledge your source verbally. It is not possible to give full academic citations in an oral presentation without disrupting the flow; citations should therefore be worked gracefully into the speech (e.g., "As William Blake wrote in Songs of Experience, 'Love seeketh only self to please.'"). As with written works, the fact that a source is on the Web does not mean it does not need to be cited.
ï If you are required to produce a written outline to accompany your speech, ensure that you give full written academic citations here for the abbreviated citations employed in the oral part of the assignments.

Use of musical sources (recordings, scores, etc.):

ï Musical creations require citation just as much as the written word. If you incorporate a musical score into a written assignment, or use a piece of music for a live or multi-media presentation, you must provide an appropriate citation. This holds true no matter where you obtained the score or recording (i.e., if it was downloaded from the Web, it still needs to cited properly).

Creative work (e.g., musical compositions, artistic presentations):

ï It is not uncommon for artists and musicians to echo or "quote" the work of other artists in their own creations. Students engaged in producing assignments that involve creativity should be aware of the guidelines of their own disciplines regarding the appropriate use of earlier works, and what sort of acknowledgment may be considered necessary.