7 Common Types of Plagiarism

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From The Grammarly Blog:

Plagiarism is the act of passing off someone else’s work as your own. That’s the most basic definition—there’s actually a lot more nuance to it, and you might be surprised to learn just how many different kinds of plagiarism exist.

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What is plagiarism, and why should it be avoided?

As we said above, plagiarism occurs when one writer attempts to pass off another writer’s work as their own. But that’s not all plagiarism is. Plagiarism also occurs when a writer references another’s work in their own writing and doesn’t properly credit the author whose work they referenced. It’s even possible for a writer to plagiarize their own work.

Plagiarism should be avoided for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s dishonest. Put simply, presenting another writer’s work as your own is lying.

Another reason to avoid plagiarism is that you don’t learn anything by plagiarizing another’s work. When your professor assigns an essay, they expect an honest effort from you to engage with the topic you’re covering, apply critical thinking skills, and demonstrate your ability to effectively develop, present, and defend your position. An original essay, flaws and all, shows your professor how you’re progressing in their class and any areas where you might need some extra support.

It’s also disrespectful to the original author. Writing is work, and it can be very challenging work at times. Claiming somebody else’s work as your own strips them of the recognition they deserve for the effort they put into creating it and gives yourself undue credit.

Keep in mind that although this blog post focuses on plagiarism in writing, it’s possible to plagiarize any kind of creative or academic work. Copying another artist’s work is a form of plagiarism, taking credit for another scientist’s research is plagiarism, and copying another app’s code and building your own with it without recognizing the original programmer is plagiarism. Basically, any act of presenting another person’s work as your own is an act of plagiarism. When you profit from an act of plagiarism, it’s known as intellectual property theft. Intellectual property theft is a criminal offense.

7 common types of plagiarism

Plagiarism comes in many forms. These seven types of plagiarism are the most common:

1. Complete plagiarism

This overt type of plagiarism occurs when a writer submits someone else’s work in their own name. Paying somebody to write a paper for you, then handing that paper in with your name on it, is an act of complete plagiarism—as is stealing or “borrowing” someone’s work and submitting it as your own.

An example of complete plagiarism is submitting a research paper for English class that your older sister wrote and submitted when she took the class five years ago.

2. Direct plagiarism

Direct plagiarism is similar to complete plagiarism in that it, too, is the overt passing-off of another writer’s words as your own. The difference between the two is how much of the paper is plagiarized. With complete plagiarism, it’s the entire paper. With direct plagiarism, specific sections or paragraphs are included without crediting (or even acknowledging) the author.

An example of direct plagiarism is dropping a line or two from your source directly into your work without quoting or citing the source.

3. Paraphrasing plagiarism

Paraphrasing plagiarism is what happens when a writer reuses another’s work and changes a few words or phrases. It’s a common type of plagiarism, and many students don’t even realize it’s a form of plagiarism. But if you’re presenting someone else’s original idea in your writing without crediting them, even if you’re presenting it in your own words, it’s plagiarism.

Link to the rest at The Grammarly Blog

While PG thinks plagiarism is a bad thing and no one should engage in the practice, he will disagree with some of the points in the OP.

In the United States, there is a vanishingly small possibility of being criminally prosecuted for plagiarism.

Generally speaking (no legal advice), to prove criminal copyright infringement charges (not exactly the same as plagiarism) in the US, the prosecutor/district attorney must produce evidence of three things the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt (and, since a criminal case can only be prosecuted by the government, you must persuade an overworked district attorney that your case is more important than the three murders, seven armed robberies and 18 burglary cases sitting on her/his desk when that individual has never heard of criminal copyright infringement before, let alone prosecuted anyone for it):

• Felony charges can be filed when 10 copies of a copyrighted work are reproduced or distributed with a retail value of more than $2,500.
• Misdemeanor charges can be filed with just 1 copy and retail value of $1,000.

(Source of lists – Pate, Johnson & Church)

Plus some types of plagiarism described in the OP likely don’t rise to the level of copyright infringement.

That said, being publicly accused of plagiarism certainly has the potential to ruin an author’s reputation and, if credible, may attract attention online and in traditional media.

As the OP teaches, plagiarism is easily remedied by crediting the original source of whatever you’re writing.

Yes, if someone claims you’ve plagiarized their work and they’re wrong, you can probably sue them back as well.

With respect to using someone else’s idea without using their expression of that idea is not copyright infringement. Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves.

As PG has mentioned before, Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl (or many-gendered variations thereof) is not protected by copyright and he doesn’t think you can plagiarise a plot structure as simple as that or the wide variety of plots typically found in any sort of genre works.