Plagiarism, or taking another person’s idea or work and presenting it as your own, is especially intolerable in academic culture. Just as taking someone else’s property constitutes physical theft, taking credit for someone else’s ideas—someone’s intellectual property—constitutes intellectual theft. In written reports and papers, you must give credit any time you use (a) another person’s actual words; (b) another person’s ideas or theories, even if you don’t quote them directly; or (c) any other information that is not considered common knowledge.

Writers and journalists whose plagiarism has been discovered—such as Jayson Blair, formerly of the New York Times, and Stephen Glass, formerly of the New Republic—have lost their jobs and their journalistic careers. Even college presidents have occasionally been found guilty of “borrowing” the words of others and using them as their own in speeches and written documents. Such discoveries result not only in embarrassment and shame, but also in lawsuits and criminal actions.

Because plagiarism can be a problem on college campuses, faculty members are now using electronic systems such as www.turnitin.com to identify passages in student papers that have been plagiarized. Many instructors routinely check their students’ papers to make sure that the writing is original. So even though the temptation to cheat or plagiarize might be strong, the chance of possibly getting a better grade isn’t worth misrepresenting yourself or your knowledge and suffering the potential consequences. Because no universal code dictates such behaviors, ask your instructors for clarification. When a student is caught violating the academic code of a particular school or instructor, pleading ignorance of the rules is a weak defense.

It should go without saying (but we’ll say it anyway) that deliberate cheating is a bad idea on many levels. Submitting a paper that you purchased from an Internet source or from an individual will cause you to miss out on the discovery and skill development that research assignments are meant to teach. Intentional plagiarism is easily detected and will almost certainly earn you a failing grade and maybe even expulsion.

Although most cases of plagiarism are the result of misunderstanding or carelessness, be aware that “I didn’t know” is not a valid excuse. Although your instructors might acknowledge that plagiarism can be an honest mistake, they will still expect you to avoid errors, and they will call you on it if you don’t. Luckily, plagiarism is relatively easy to avoid. Keep careful notes as you conduct your research so that later on you don’t inadvertently mistake someone else’s words or ideas for your own. Finally, be sure to check out your own campus’s definition of what constitutes plagiarism, which you will find in the student handbook or in first-year English course materials. If you have any questions or doubts about what is and is not acceptable, ask.