How do you define plagiarism?
Definition less important than avoidance

It is easy to rattle off a definition for plagiarism but far harder to find ways to avoid plagiarism. You need to be sure your students can do both: the effects of plagiarism can be painful and long-lasting.

Plagiarism's linguistic history

The word plagiarism comes from a Latin root, plagiarizes, which means a kidnapper, seducer or plunderer.

The term first popped up in the English language late in the Renaissance, a period when kidnapping, seductions, and plundering were all-too-common events in the western World. The closest English term in current use today is piracy, an activity which was also common worldwide then.

The early 1600s were also the time when the printing press was making reproduction of writing fast and easy — at least by comparison to hand copying.

It's not too hard to put historical events and the Latin root together to help us define plagiarism as the appropriation of someone else's writing for the plagiarist's gain.

However, that historical definition is both too narrow and too broad to help your students much.

Plagiarism in contemporary society

The wholesale copying and sale of someone else's work that was considered plagiarism in the seventeenth century is called piracy or copyright violation today.

Today's plagiarists are more like shoplifters than pirates, stealing portions of other people's writing, rather than taking the whole thing. Also, contemporary plagiarists typically are not selling the stolen property for immediate financial reward.

Today's plagiarists take other people's writing for one of these reasons:

• They want to avoid the effort of doing their own thinking.

• They are in a hurry.

• They don't know any better.

• They think they are doing what they are supposed to do.

Another reason for plagiarism is the famous response E: all of the above.

Define plagiarism for students

When you define plagiarism, you need to be sure your explanation covers:

• What is misappropriated.

• How the material is misappropriated.

• How much is misappropriated.

We'll look at each of these individually.

What is misappropriated?

What can be plagiarized includes:

• The arrangement of words, that is, an author's distinctive phrasing of ideas.

• The logical thread of an argument.

No one can be accused of plagiarizing an expression or phrase that is common among people who speak or write on the topic. Phrasing that is distinctive belongs to its author; anyone borrowing distinctive phrasing must give the author credit.

It is also possible to plagiarize by using someone else's logic or someone else's outline on a subject without appropriate credit if that logic or outline is distinctive. You cannot plagiarize a particular arrangement of material that's commonplace among people who speak or write on the topic.

How can students know what is distinctive?

If you give students writing prompts on authentic topics within your discipline, you can expect them to learn what the standard phrasing and standard arguments are within your discipline. Learning that material is part of learning your course curriculum.

How is the material is misappropriated?

Students can plagiarize deliberately by taking someone else's work and passing it off as their own. Students who plagiarize this way on a large scale are dumb as well as dishonest. Fortunately, I don't get many students who fit that description.

Most plagiarism I see is usually misunderstanding or sloppiness rather than deliberate dishonesty.

Common types of plagiarism are:

• Failing to make clear where borrowed material ends.

• Mixing borrowed material in with the student's own material so that the extent of borrowing is unclear.

• Crediting an author with an idea but failing to put quotation marks around distinctive borrowed language from the author.

• Paraphrasing an author's argument without giving credit.

Each of these causes of plagiarism can be addressed by teaching students the evidence waltz. The evidence waltz is most graceful when students summarize instead of paraphrasing.

How much material is misappropriated?

College and university professors typically treat plagiarism as if it were PCB contamination and fatal in minute parts per million. In other words, at the college level any plagiarism of any kind for any reason is too much.

Achieving that level of plagiarism avoidance should be one of your teaching objectives. Kindly remember, however, that you need to train students to achieve that standard. Boiling in hot oil is not an appropriate reaction to a first time plagiarism offense in seventh grade.