Avoiding Plagiarism Takes Work

When Mrs. Cowley's old student told that story of when the majority of his class was busted for plagiarism, my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that many students could be caught plagiarizing for one assignment. Why would so many students be that dishonest? Then I realized that plagiarism isn't always intentional. I bet it would be easy for any English teacher to be nit-picky enough about proper documentation to "catch" virtually any paper one of their students wrote. Writing a research paper, it's hard to perfectly document, paraphrase, quote, in-text-cite every single piece of information. It takes both creativity and hard work to really avoid plagiarism.

Plagiarism is easy to do. It was interesting to hear what Mrs. Cowley's former student had to say about how the best way to avoid plagiarizing sources is to not procrastinate. Since proper documentation is so time-consuming, "cramming" to write an essay usually results in the lack thereof; you'll simply run out of time to really make an argument and not use other people's words. Also, I have been amazed at how tough it really is to know exactly how to cite each work I'm using in my paper, what with page numbers, online databases, blogs, and other funky things that the handbook is kind of vague about. If I get started early though, I can go to the teacher and make sure I've got it right. Otherwise, I'm up a creek without a paddle.

In the Little Penguin Handbook, it sets down pretty strict guidelines for making sure writers paraphrase, quote, and summarize their source properly. To really do these things without plagiarizing, a writer has to make efforts to really put the material from their source into their own words. They can't just change a few words here and there and say it's in their own words (like pretty much everyone did in their k-12 education sometime or another). They have to essentially change or manipulate what is said to back up the point they are trying to make, and it's preferred that they barely use any of the original wording, if they use any at all. This requires creativity. In the publication given to us when Mrs. Cowley's old student talked to us, there's an article called "Good Teachers are Eager to Learn from their Students." It argues (to summarize!) that plagiarism is a lack of creativity. It is the absence of the essence of writing. To really avoid plagiarizing someone else's work, a writer has to make a work of his own.

Proper documentation takes effort and creativity. The more I think about our professor's old student's story of how almost everyone was "caught" plagiarizing, the less I'm astounded. Having to avoid plagiarism stinks!