Plagiarism, simply stated is the act of taking somebody else’s work and attempting to portray it as your own. This can be done orally or in print, music, art, expression, or video. For the purpose of this article I’ll focus on printed plagiarism. Obviously that’s the concern here on the forum due it being… uh, well, you know, a forum.
It’s understandable that many bots or lazy spammers take other people’s work and post it willy-nilly to bolster their post count, and spread their spam without significance. That’s not what I’m aiming to address. Instead my target audience is those of you who have no such intentions, but are merely here to discuss the pertinent topic, and would like to stay out of trouble while doing so.
I’ve noticed a few cases lately where people have been banned for plagiarism, but after a bit of research it was plainly obvious they made a simple mistake. Unintentional plagiarism is just as damaging to the reputation of the forum as the spambots’ plagiaristic activities. So, even a simple mistake is no excuse, and it’s a mistake that is very easily avoided. Take heed; plagiarism is not taken lightly here.
There’s nothing wrong with citing another’s work to help support your point or argument, or to augment your own words on a particular subject. So, let’s explore how to do that properly, and avoiding being perma-banned.
The simplest way to properly credit someone for their work is to simply use quotation marks, and add their name or a source after the passage you’re quoting. Here’s an example:
“Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.”
- Mark Twain
If you need to attribute the text to a source, make it clear and label it as a source to avoid ambiguity. Even if you attribute the text to an author, it never hurts to cite a source. In fact it helps a lot. Again, make it clear like so:
Source: https://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2009/12/mark-twain-revisited-a-reply-from-shelley/
Another way credit an author for their work is to use the quote function available in the posting window:
Select the text you want to attribute as a quote, then click the “Insert Quote” button
on the options panel.
You can also attribute the text to an author by adding “author=<name>” within the quote bracket, like my example below:
[quote author=Mark Twain]
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.
[/quote]
Example:
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.
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