Plagiarism happens when you use specific words, phrases, ideas, or structures from other authors’ documents without citing the source and giving credit to the original author. This means that emulating another author’s style, tone, organization or actual words requires that you credit the author.
Submitting another person’s work as your own is another, more straightforward, version of plagiarism. This means that copying work, hiring it out, having someone else edit your work, or using papers downloaded from the Internet are all forms of plagiarism.
So, you must be careful not to copy:
- Words
- Phrases
- Concepts or ideas
- Sentence, paragraph, argument, or sectioning structures
- Any work that was completed by another person
Plagiarism is a Serious Offense...
...that can result in not just failing a paper or a course, but expulsion from the University. It can also seem like an ethical “grey area,” but in reality, acceptable vs. unacceptable practice is quite clear.
(Please see UCD's Academic Honor Code and Discipline Policies page)
Exception: Shared Disciplinary Jargon
To be clear, every discipline has standard terminology—for instance, “mitochondrial DNA,” “Greek Revival style,” or “Second-Language Learners.” Using this shared disciplinary jargon is unavoidable and typically is not cause for citation use or considered plagiarism. That said, you cannot ethically use the same phrasing or sentence structure from a source text, even in cited paraphrase.
