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Welcome to the Department of Plagiarism Investigation.

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The D.P.I. has dealt with numerous complex cases

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in their effort to bring plagiarists to justice

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and to rescue purloined texts.

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The first form of plagiarism

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that the D.P.I. regularly encounters

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is known as brain child snatching,

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in honor of the Latin word, plagiarius,

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from which plagiarism originates.

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Brain child snatchers sneak up on innocent papers

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and copy and paste them

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without citing any sources,

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putting quotation marks around direct quotes

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or changing a word.

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They've also been known to steal and hold

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particularly eloquent essays for ransom.

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When brain child snatchers get together,

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they form a kidnapping ring,

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which involves brain child snatching

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from multiple sources.

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Some perpetrators have even been known

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to commit self-plagiarism,

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one of the laziest crimes in the annals of the D.P.I.

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Also known as one-sided collaborators,

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these odd balls snatch up entire texts

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or small passages that they've written before

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and present them as brand-new material.

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Brain child snatchers and kidnapping rings

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are easy for the D.P.I. to catch.

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Just paste a few passages into a search engine,

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and BAM!

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They're caught red-handed.

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The more covert forms of plagiarism

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include the wild goose chase technique,

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in which plagiarists create fake authors,

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book titles,

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page numbers,

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or other information

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in order to cover up plagiarism.

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And the old synonym switcheroo

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in which plagiarists utilize a thesaurus

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as their main weapon.

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By substituting a synonym

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for nearly every word in the document

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and leaving the sentence structure

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and order of the ideas the same,

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plagiarists give legitimate paraphrasing

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a very bad name.

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Shoddy paraphrasing is also a key part

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of variations on a smokescreen,

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a technique in which multiple passages

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are paraphrased,

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then pasted together into one.

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The thorniest issue that the D.P.I. deals with

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is the misconception

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that you can never be accused of plagiarism

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if you use quotes and cite your sources.

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This is most certainly not the case

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because a paper that is made up

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of passage upon passage of other people's ideas

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is known as a wholly quotable document.

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This is considered plagiarism

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since there are no original thoughts in the work.

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Similarly, passage after passage

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of too closely paraphrased text from multiple cited sources

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is also plagiarism of the pervasively paraphrased kind

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because the ideas still aren't one's own.

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And lastly, the technique of revealing while concealing

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is plagiarism because it involves selective amnesia

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regarding one's sources

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in an attempt to cover up wholly quotable

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and pervasively paraphrased issues in a text.

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Some passages are meticulously documented,

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quoted,

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or paraphrased,

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while others are presented entirely as one's own.

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As you can see, the D.P.I. has its hands full,

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tackling all sorts of academic mischief and mayhem,

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ranging from the petty to the outrageous.

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Given the gravity of these transgressions,

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you might be wondering why you've never heard

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of the Department of Plagiarism Investigation's victories.

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That's because it doesn't technically exist.

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But people, like you and me, can be our own D.P.I. agents

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to fight plagiarism

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and uphold the values of original thinking.

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We know that the best defense against plagiarism

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consists of writers who save themselves

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time, worry, and effort

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by taking the far easier road

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of just doing the work themselves.