What Constitutes Plagiarism

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The word Plagiarism is found in all the Roman language with the early meaning of stealing. Today, the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work, as by not crediting the author or something used or represented in this manner is called plagiarism. Many people think plagiarism is copying another’s work, or borrowing someone else’s original ideas. But terms like “copying” and “borrowing” can disguise the seriousness of the offense. Plagiarism is a very serious ethical and immoral offense which affects the whole society.

Now the question arises that if it is such a serious offense, what constitutes plagiarism? If we investigate and get a close look at “how and what constitutes plagiarism”, it will become easy to handle this problem. As every one knows that plagiarism exists in almost all fields in different shapes. Now first thing is what constitutes plagiarism in academic departments. In colleges and schools, there are different reasons for committing plagiarism.
Most of the students actually don’t know its actual meanings and seriousness of this matter. So they commit this crime without realizing that they are doing some sinful act. One of the reasons for the presence of plagiarism in colleges or universities could be lack of knowledge about this crime. Another reason is lack of confidence, as students feel not confident to represent their own work, which could cause them to cheat some other’s material. Sometimes students thought that plagiarism is just to copy material of other authors or copying something from the internet, but they don’t consider plagiarism to copy from their fellow students. It can also be called unintentional plagiarism. The main reason for plagiarism in students is the use of the internet for getting study material. When they have a whole lot of information on their fingertips and copy-pasting made it so easy to get anything, the temptation of getting anything so easily and fast make them do this offense.
Now let’s have a look, what constitutes plagiarism in journalism and arts. When plagiarism has been practicing in almost every field, the music industry is also suffering from this curse. It becomes very easy to pick any music piece from any far area of some unknown musician and imitate it, and then represent it as his own. The causes of plagiarism are off course using shortcuts, laps in copyright laws, and misuse of internet indeed. In the same way, there have been a number of high-profile cases in recent years of plagiarism among reporters. These incidents are serious because they damage the credibility not only of the journalists directly involved but all journalists. The temptation to plagiarize is greater than ever because of the internet, which places a seemingly infinite amount of information just a mouse-click away. The problem is the attitude of journalists because in this highly competitive environment they need to be self-confident and take it as healthy competition.