Almost every time a teacher assigns a research paper and every year at the beginning of science classes in high school, plagiarism is mentioned. It may seem excessive but plagiarism is definitely a serious offense and certainly deserves all the attention it's getting. Teachers must warn students about plagiarism because they know students often take this route and it's the easy way out. I've talked a lot about plagiarism without even defining the word, so I"ll do it in my own words. Plagiarism is simply taking credit for someone's work without acknowledging them. Now knowing what plagiarism is, it is easy to conclude that is it not only wrong and unethical, but it is also against the law. .
There are many reasons for which an individual would result in plagiarism. One would simply be the person is too lazy to create their own work. Another scenario would be the student forgets about the assignment and quickly finds a source, prints it, and turns it in as their own work just for the sake of turning something in as to avoiding the late penalty. In either case, what both of these people did was wrong and they face very serious consequences. Colleges take plagiarism extremely seriously and one offense could result in expulsion and even legal actions.
Knowing the serious consequences of plagiarism, one has many options of preventing plagiarism intentionally or unintentionally. The best way of preventing plagiarism is to credit all the sources you've used in the bibliography or the works cited page. Even if you choose to paraphrase the information found in the text, you should still include them in your citing. There are numerous ways to credit your sources, including official guidelines, handbooks and specific ways that can be done.
