7 Important Myths About Plagiarism That You Need To Know

Last updated on May 20th, 2023 at 07:35 pm

Plagiarism is using another person’s words, thoughts, or ideas without adding the proper credit.

According to Merriam-Webster to “Plagiarize” means:

“To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own”

“To use (author’s production) without crediting the source”

In simple words, it is an act of fraud and involves stealing another person’s work without citation. Whether you’re in the workspace or in the classroom, plagiarism is one of those topics that people don’t like to talk about.

This lack of conversation has led people to commit different acts of plagiarism. Today, in this post, we are going to take a look at some important myths about plagiarism.

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7 Myths About Plagiarism That You Need To Know

1. Plagiarism is All About The Percentage

Most people believe that if more than a specific percentage of plagiarized text comes back as copied, but it’s plagiarism.

Whether the amount is 2%, 5%, or 15%, etc, the general idea is that there is a strong limit that how much the content can match and not be plagiarized.

Several online plagiarism-checking tools don’t find plagiarism-matching text in the content. Because there are some possibilities that the content has a specific amount of copied text with proper citation.

On the other side, the copied content without proper citation is still plagiarism.

Therefore, it is possible to have a matching percentage under any theoretical limit that involves plagiarism.

2. If you Rewrite the Content, then it’s not Plagiarism

Many people believe that one of the easiest ways to avoid plagiarism is by rewriting the previous content. Normally, it does not work perfectly. Many plagiarism checking tools can’t find the rewritten text, but it doesn’t make the rewritten work any less plagiarized.

The main reason behind this is plagiarism is not just about using the author’s words, it is also about the ideas and thoughts as well.

Being a writer, if you are using another person’s work without using any of his/her words and attribution, you are committing plagiarism.

Therefore, while rewriting a piece of content could avoid plagiarism detection, but it doesn’t make it any less plagiarism.

3. Rules of Plagiarism are Universal

On the standard notes plagiarism, there is a belief that something simply is or isn’t plagiarism. It is also widely spread that the rules for reusing the previous text and citation are universal.

In reality, they vary many differences. For example, the rules of the classroom for students are quite different from the rules of writing for a novelist.

Therefore, everyone must be mindful of the field that they’re working in when deciding whether either you should use plagiarism or not. Never suppose that there is a universal standard for what is or isn’t plagiarized.

Everyone must better understand the environment in which they’re working before taking any decision to use and cite another person’s work.

4. Plagiarism Checkers can Detect Plagiarism

Plagiarism checking tools don’t find plagiarism, they just highlight the copied text used in the work. They are extremely powerful, but their name is something of a misnomer.

The online plagiarism checker uses the latest AI technology and matches the input text without databases to find the copied text.

Depending upon the online checker, it has to make an effort to not highlight the accurately-cited text and ignore the content in quotation marks.

Most plagiarism checking tools only highlight the text or passage that was first used somewhere on the internet. This copying of the quoted or cited text is not plagiarism because the plagiarized text is properly cited.

In addition, the online plagiarism-detecting tools are helpful in finding the copied text. However, there is still a need for a person to determine whether the plagiarized text report is right or not.

5. Accidental Plagiarism is not Crucial

Paraphrasing the previously published content is still detected as plagiarism.

If you put your 100% effort into paraphrasing the previous work by using synonym and sentence changer techniques, it is still considered plagiarized text. At times, the online plagiarism checker can confuse you by displaying different pieces of similarities that you’ve never copied.

Sometimes, this happens because you ran short of information and keep repeating the text of previous research. You may try your best to avoid plagiarism, but the reality is that you commit plagiarism and it is a serious offence.

6. Committing Self-Plagiarism is not a Big Issue

Several students commit plagiarism by rewriting their previous assignments to meet the deadlines.

It is considered academic plagiarism and many students oppose this by saying that nothing has been copied from the other person’s work. Being a student copying another students’ work can cause you some serious trouble.

Several writers and bloggers take this advantage and reuse their work to meet the deadline of their clients.

It is also one of the reasons that why many publications with granting authorities have some specific rules counter to reuse previous work without any citation.

7. Direct Quotations Only Have to be Cited

A large number of students commit plagiarism simply by forgetting to cite the actual source of the original content in their academic work.

They normally believe that only the quoted work should be cited. Therefore, they avoid using direct quotes by paraphrasing all the content. But the truth is that words are the ways to communicate with the readers and using someone’s ideas or thoughts without any credit is plagiarism.

Citing and giving attributes to the copied text with the best guidelines is the only way to avoid plagiarism. Therefore, if you are paraphrasing someone else’s work with any credit or citation, the content is still plagiarized.

Conclusion

Plagiarism is complicated and most of the myths and misunderstandings about plagiarism are quite confusing.

The mentioned above myths about plagiarism are quite important and every writer and student has to understand them. The reality is that there are no easy ways or rules for plagiarism. The best way to understand this topic is to talk about it.

This shows that teachers and administrators must need to do more than write the plagiarism guidelines. They have to provide real guidance to the students on how, when, and where to cite the copied text.

Another perfect way to prevent plagiarism is by having detailed knowledge of plagiarism policy.

Therefore, the very first step to evading plagiarism is by putting an effort to end the confusion around it and the best way to start there is with the above important myths.

Check out our free plagiarism detector for all your content.