Four Types of Plagiarism
Four Types of Plagiarism Commonly Seen in Students’ Papers
Many students get worried about their workload and amount of papers to be submitted in every subject. Most of students experience dreadful emotions when they get a new home assignment, especially if a topic is complex. However, one of the biggest fears relates to plagiarism because not all students understand what it is and how it can be avoided in academic writing.
We have created a guide that will help you comprehend how plagiarism can influence your grades. Take your time reading about the most common types of plagiarism and you will surely overcome it in your pieces of writing.
Direct Plagiarism
Most of plagiarism detection checkers easily identify direct plagiarism. In other words, a detection tool highlights places that were simply copied without proper referencing (sentences, phrases, clauses, etc.). If such places are not taken in quotation marks and there are no references, it is called direct plagiarism. This kind of cheating leads to drastic consequences and students usually get a plagiarism record in their academic profiles.
Self-Plagiarism
Plagiarizing yourself is commonly seen among students who submit their old papers or take excerpts from their previous home assignments. Usually college graduates use their previous works while obtaining a Master’s degree. Please mind that if you want to continue exploring the same topic and extend an existing paper written by yourself, you will have to get a professor’s approval not to be blamed for plagiarism.
Puzzle Plagiarism
Many students access online sources and collect some random sentences/paragraphs, including them in one paper. They fail to quote the text and give credit to sources, where information was retrieved. In addition, they paraphrase the text, so that one can barely find some similarities with the original sources. As a result, students may be blamed for cheating due to the misusage of referencing material.
Unintentional Plagiarism
If you want to avoid this kind of plagiarism, you must learn how to deal with different citation styles. If your assignment requires the usage of outside sources, you must cite them properly in different parts of the text. Remember that you should place a citation right after the borrowed idea. If you fail to provide correct citations in the needed places, you plagiarize. Therefore, you should learn how to introduce research ideas in the paper and how they should be referenced.