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What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is taking someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own without giving proper credit to the source of your information. As such, it is intellectual theft and is considered one of the most serious forms of academic dishonesty.
In some cases, the act of plagiarism is intentional. The student, for example, who buys or "borrows" another student's term paper is aware that he is cheating. He engages in this behavior in the belief that he will not be caught. In other cases, the plagiarism is unintentional: a student who does not cite his sources or who fails to use quotation marks when using someone else's words may simply be ignorant of the proper way to document his information.
Take a look at the video below created and produced by Lehman College. It demonstrates what plagiarism often looks like and gives tips on how to avoid plagiarism.
