Thoughts on Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a silent and deadly disease that can creep into your writing and turn you from an independent, creative researcher and author into a mere copycat of other people's original thoughts and ideas. Plagiarism usually starts with a small sentence or paragraph being used without proper quotation or reference and escalates into the copying of whole papers or articles. This I believe is a very dangerous trend, especially during a student's formative years.

As a student in high school, we were taught not to plagiarize. Some early term papers did contain some plagiarism and we did not receive severe penalties for the transgression, but the teachers let us know in no uncertain terms that plagiarism would not be tolerated as the school year progressed and certainly plagiarism would not be tolerated at the college level. Independent thought using published articles as the seed of your own original ideas was the key to making students into good researchers and writers.

Aside from the lack of learning that plagiarism promotes, the stigma of being caught and labeled as a plagiarist can follow you through your professional life. There is a famous politician who was caught plagiarizing a paper in college, and even though that was over 25 years ago, it is still brought up today. If you will take the easy way out through plagiarism, you may also be tempted to take the easy way out in other endeavors in your life. Doing the hard work when researching and writing articles and papers is good training and discipline for every area of your life. These life lessons will become habits and remain with you the rest of your life.

When people learn that someone is willing to plagiarize others work, they become suspicious of that person. Once the boundary of stealing ideas has been crossed, others will be watching to see if you are willing to go farther and steal other things. In a business setting this can ruin a team effort and have everyone looking over their shoulder to see if someone is stealing their ideas to present as their own instead of freely expressing their ideas and creating an atmosphere of sharing and contributing.

In conclusion, plagiarism is a good habit to stay away from because as most "addictive" endeavors, it leads to more serious infractions and consequences.