What is Plagiarism?

Most writers when asked "Why they want to become Writers?" supply that, "They want to be known for their bestselling books and thought provoking articles." This reason is good enough to aspire to writing and becoming a renown author someday. But how can a writer get to such height by imitating and plagiarizing other people's works.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Plagiarism is "taking someone's work or idea and pretending it is your own." The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary also gives the following definitions;

• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
• to use (another's production) without crediting the source
• to commit literary theft
• to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

Plagiarism does not in any way help a writer or anyone. It rather reduces the individual's ability to creatively think and sprout ideas. Plagiarism is a lazy man's hobby and yields no fruit. The moment an individual begins to plagiarize other people's works, he/she begins to sound like a broken record. One will find that in the bid of the plagiarist to sound correct, he looses his originality and he/she will for a very long time be hidden from his own writing voice.

Plagiarism. org identifies ways to know if you are plagiarizing anybody's work

• turning in someone else's work as your own
  
  
• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

Apart from written works, images and video content can be plagiarized. This tends to occur when an individual who works with others on a collaborative project goes ahead to release sensitive materials or the entire project, while passing it off as his/her own, without its been vetted by all project collaborators.

Most cases of plagiarism can be averted when people cite the sources from where they derive their written, photographic or video content. Plagiarism can also be avoided entirely when writers get to work with their imagination.