The punishable perils of plagiarism - Melissa Huseman D'Annunzio

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Fighting plagiarism is serious business. From brainchild-snatching to wholly quotables, plagiarists have plenty of wily ways to pass others' work off as their own -- and all of them are threats to original thinking. Melissa Huseman D'Annunzio imagines what would happen if a Department of Plagiarism Investigation were on the case.

Lesson by Melissa Huseman D'Annunzio, animation by Hache Rodriguez.

Welcome to the Department of Plagiarism Investigation.

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

in their effort to bring plagiarists to justice

and to rescue purloined texts.

The first form of plagiarism

that the D.P.I. regularly encounters

is known as brain child snatching,

in honor of the Latin word, plagiarius,

from which plagiarism originates.

Brain child snatchers sneak up on innocent papers

and copy and paste them

without citing any sources,

putting quotation marks around direct quotes

or changing a word.

They've also been known to steal and hold

particularly eloquent essays for ransom.

When brain child snatchers get together,

they form a kidnapping ring,

which involves brain child snatching

from multiple sources.

Some perpetrators have even been known

to commit self-plagiarism,

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

Also known as one-sided collaborators,

these odd balls snatch up entire texts

or small passages that they've written before

and present them as brand-new material.

Brain child snatchers and kidnapping rings

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

Just paste a few passages into a search engine,

and BAM!

They're caught red-handed.

The more covert forms of plagiarism

include the wild goose chase technique,

in which plagiarists create fake authors,

book titles,

page numbers,

or other information

in order to cover up plagiarism.

And the old synonym switcheroo

in which plagiarists utilize a thesaurus

as their main weapon.

By substituting a synonym

for nearly every word in the document

and leaving the sentence structure

and order of the ideas the same,

plagiarists give legitimate paraphrasing

a very bad name.

Shoddy paraphrasing is also a key part

of variations on a smokescreen,

a technique in which multiple passages

are paraphrased,

then pasted together into one.

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

is the misconception

that you can never be accused of plagiarism

if you use quotes and cite your sources.

This is most certainly not the case

because a paper that is made up

of passage upon passage of other people's ideas

is known as a wholly quotable document.

This is considered plagiarism

since there are no original thoughts in the work.

Similarly, passage after passage

of too closely paraphrased text from multiple cited sources

is also plagiarism of the pervasively paraphrased kind

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

And lastly, the technique of revealing while concealing

is plagiarism because it involves selective amnesia

regarding one's sources

in an attempt to cover up wholly quotable

and pervasively paraphrased issues in a text.

Some passages are meticulously documented,

quoted,

or paraphrased,

while others are presented entirely as one's own.

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

tackling all sorts of academic mischief and mayhem,

ranging from the petty to the outrageous.

Given the gravity of these transgressions,

you might be wondering why you've never heard

of the Department of Plagiarism Investigation's victories.

That's because it doesn't technically exist.

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

to fight plagiarism

and uphold the values of original thinking.

We know that the best defense against plagiarism

consists of writers who save themselves

time, worry, and effort

by taking the far easier road

of just doing the work themselves.