The Non-Art of Plagiarism

If your buddy tells you about a great new service he just invented where he sells essays online—some pre-written, some made-to-order—then please inform him that he's not as creative as he thinks. People have been writing and selling research papers for well over a century. In fact, in 1910 it was considered the bane of higher education and great efforts were made to eradicate the practice.

The Internet has certainly complicated the issue for educators, but in a way, it has also helped mitigate the problem.

Did you know that your professors are just as good at using Google as you are? That snappy essay you found in about five seconds will take your professor all of four seconds to find. Cutting-and-pasting dubious lines and passages from your essay into Google search is not only easy for your professors, but it's also kind of fun. I don't consider myself the plagiarism police, but I do find it a satisfying way to spend a few minutes while grading papers. When in the midst of a sloppy essay I get a very articulate paragraph, my instinct is to cut-and-paste it into the search bar. The results are often damning.

In addition to Google, most educators have access to extensive databases such as Turnitin and UnPlag. Your college likely pays thousands of dollars a year to subscribe to these services. Every time you email your paper or submit it to the classroom learning site, like Blackboard or Canvas, your paper will be checked against millions of other papers and a comprehensive report will be sent to your professor.

I'm not saying this to "scare you straight." If you're going to cheat, you're going to cheat—there isn't much I can do about that. But I want to make sure you're aware that you will likely spend more time, effort, energy, and anxiety trying to cheat your way out of the assignment than actually just writing it yourself. And, if you feel the need to cheat so badly, it's probably a good sign that you are a poor writer and are in need of the expertise your professor has to offer (that is, after all, why you're investing so much time and money attending college—to actually learn something).

If you're still reading this—good for you. Most students, I suspect, give up at this point, either because they already know they're not ever going to plagiarize, or because nothing I say is going to change their mind. Regardless, here are my top ten reasons why plagiarism stinks: 

1.   Plagiarism hurts your professors' feelings. 

I spend a lot of time reading and responding to my students' essays. When I find out I've invested an hour of my own time reading a paper you bought online for twenty bucks, it not only makes me extremely angry, it breaks my heart a little.

2.   Plagiarism weakens you in the workplace. 

Someday, somebody who is paying you real money will ask you to write something. You are going to panic, but then you're going to remember all of the things you learned in college about how to write. And then you'll do just fine. Unless, that is, you skated through college by plagiarizing your papers, then you're just going to panic and have to find someone else to do your work for you. And then hopefully you will get fired.

3.   Plagiarism is an insult to your classmates. 

When you refuse to put in the same time and effort to complete your writing assignments as your classmates, you send the message that you are better than them. They can sense this. They will loathe you for it. You are not better than them.

4.   Plagiarism is theft. 

In most cases, the person being plagiarized has no idea. If they did, why would they grant permission for someone to steal their work and claim it as their own? Even if you found the paper on a legit website, chances are the original author doesn't know it's there and will never see a penny of profits. 

5.   Plagiarism is deceptive. 

Nobody plagiarizes with good intentions. Your intention is always to deceive. That's why it is hard for professors to be forgiving when they catch you. 

6.   Plagiarism violates trust. 

Once you've lost the trust of your professor (or your boss) it's nearly impossible to regain it.

7.   Plagiarism is a gateway vice. 

If you're willing to lie and cheat just to get a better grade, what other offenses will you eventually commit to deal with your inadequacies?

8.   Plagiarism causes you to lose confidence in yourself. 

If you earn a degree knowing you could only do it through cheating and plagiarizing, it is next to impossible to believe you can accomplish anything else in life without lying and cheating.

9.   Plagiarism diminishes the value of a degree for everyone else. 

If the public believes most college students cheat and plagiarize, then those who don't plagiarize are pulled down by those who do.

10.  Plagiarism denies you the opportunity to express yourself. 

You write to make your opinions heard. If you plagiarize, you're just regurgitating someone else's opinions and ignoring your own. I bet you have something important to say, and you want people to hear it. So say it. Don’t waste your time plagiarizing what someone else said. 

The Art of Borrowing 

Most college writing courses will require you to write some sort of research paper. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is to help you learn to use other-people's thoughts and ideas in your own writing. You are not expected to come up with original material with every sentence. There is a lot of great stuff out there in books, magazines, and websites. Your professors want you to use that stuff in your own writing. They just don't want you to pretend like you created it out of thin air. That's why we teach you how to cite your sources—how to give credit to the people who came up with those ideas or who said those words. That doesn't make your writing any weaker or less original. It just makes it honest and forthright. 

It might be true that everything worth saying has already been written by the Romans. And if not the Romans, then by some bored blogger. An important element of academic writing is learning how to look beyond yourself to see what's already been said or studied on any given topic. If you are comparing The Scarlet Letter to The Walking Dead, chances are, someone has already said or done something similar. Unless you're writing for an exam, you aren't expected to shut out the world and pretend like you're the first and only person to ever write about that topic. Not only would it be a fruitless, frustrating waste of time, it actually goes against the whole goal of academic writing.

Your professors actually want you to use Google and search engines and library databases to see what other folks have said, and they want you to incorporate those things into your own writing. Seriously! This isn't cheating. This is writing like a scholar. What your professors don't want, however, is for you to pretend like all that good stuff you found came from your own head.

How do you prevent that from happening?

Source attribution.

Attribution, or source citation, simply means that you give credit where credit is due. If you use someone else's words or ideas, mention somewhere in your writing who said it and where you found it. This can be done with a footnote, an in-text-citation, or an end-of-text citation. If your teacher requires you to use MLA, APA, Chicago or some other formal citation system, all they are really doing is telling you how they want you to format your attributions (Chicago, for example, uses footnotes, while MLA and APA use parenthetical citations).

If in doubt, cite your sources. No one will ever accuse you of giving too much credit in your writing to other people. In fact, they might praise you instead—professors love it when you cite outside sources. The more the better. 

Academic Honesty and Dual Submissions 

I don't call it plagiarism, but I know professors who do—turning in the same piece of writing for two classes, or turning in something you write for a different class (maybe you’re thinking of dusting off your senior thesis from high-school and submitting it for a college class). This is tricky territory. It’s not plagiarism, and it’s not stealing. But it is kind of sneaky and dishonest since most professors require you to produce original work for that particular course.

Don't make assumptions when it comes to your professor's policy on this. Just ask him or her. Usually, professors will allow these dual or recycled submissions, but they’ll require you to make some changes or additions (chances are that the paper, no matter how great it is, won’t fully satisfy the assignment instructions as is). 

A Word or Two about Artificial Intelligence

There is an ongoing debate among educators about whether or not using AI, such as ChatGPT, is plagiarism. My view is that if you properly cite it, it's not plagiarism. But that's only if your instructor allows you to use it in the first place. My advice is to ask your instructor or check the syllabus to see if they have a policy on AI before assuming it's okay to use it. I allow my students to use AI on certain assignments, and I have a section in my syllabus that outlines how and when they can use it. But I also remind them that every instructor has their own thoughts on AI.

When used correctly, AI can be a wonderful tool to help you learn material, come up with ideas, organize your thoughts, and edit your papers. 

It isn't as simple, though, as just typing in your prompt and then turning in whatever ChatGPT churns out. AI isn't that advanced (yet), so the paper would be severely lacking and probably get an F. Plus, AI should be used as a tool to help you with your writing process, just like using a dictionary or Grammarly or a citation generator. Simply having it write the entire paper for you without any revision on your part would be cheating. And lazy. When used correctly, however, it can help you learn new concepts, generate ideas, organize your thoughts, and structure your writing. 

AI works best if you do it in small chunks, like helping you to summarize a source or editing a paragraph. You will also need to play around with your prompt and revise the response so that it is appropriate to the rhetorical situation and the assignment objectives.

In the end, you are the architect and the foreman of your paper. You should be figuring out the big things, like organization, formatting, tone, style, unity, cohesion, analysis, and persuasion. AI is just a day laborer that can make your job a little easier if properly managed. 

Citing AI

If you use AI, you must cite it like any other source. 

Keep in mind that AI would be considered a tertiary source, like a dictionary, and wouldn't be applied to the minimum source count. So if your instructor says you need to use at least 4 sources, you would still need to use 4 primary or secondary sources beyond the AI program. But still list your use of AI in your works-cited or references page. 

Visit the MLA handbook or the APA handbook for details on how to properly cite AI.

If you haven't used AI yet, I recommend playing around with it. See what's out there. I recently discovered a wonderful free program called Otter.AI. It can record meetings and classes and then create a transcript and a detailed summary. It's amazing. I use it in most of my meetings now, and many of my students use it in class. It's a great example of a powerful AI tool that can help simplify your life and make learning easier.