The 'academic sin' that is easily avoided

This lesson is the most important one. Knowing what constitutes plagiarism will help you turn in faultless papers that include your ideas in your language and appropriate credit to other people's ideas and language. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own, which is a serious academic transgression that may result in a failing grade or expulsion.

Colleges and universities require students to do their own research and their own writing. Institutions of higher learning have policies outlining the consequences of plagiarism as well as cheating since both are considered equally wrong.

But there is deliberate plagiarism, and accidental.

Most plagiarism is unintentional

Many students committing plagiarism might not be aware that the sentence they copied but forgot to write a citation for is enough to cause them real trouble. Here are two important facts to know about plagiarism in college papers:

Two important facts about how instructors detect plagiarized portions of students' papers.
Five words in a row published in a work are enough to be picked up by a plagiarism checker. Instructors routinely use plagiarism checkers.

By now, you have learned how to find academic sources for your papers and how to cite them, so you have the tools to avoid plagiarizing someone's work.

Quiz?

Of course.