Plagiarism

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Plagiarism Quiz

1. Three different acts are considered plagiarism. What are they?

2. What is ‘common knowledge’?

3. Why is it plagiarism to fail to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks?

4. How can you avoid plagiarizing when you are summarizing or paraphrasing a source?

5. Is the following passage plagiarized? Why or why not?

Original passage (from On Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner):

People scrounge cans because they have to have a little cash. I have tried scrounging cans with an able-bodied companion. Afoot a can scrounger simply cannot make more than a few dollars in a day. One can extract the necessities of life from the Dumpsters directly with far less effort than would be required to accumulate the equivalent value in cans. (p. 309)

Paraphrase:

Eighner claims that people collect cans because they have to have some money. I have attempted to scrounge cans with a helper, but on foot a can scrounger simply cannot make more than a few dollars every day. A person could find the necessities of life from the Dumpsters directly with much less effort. (p. 309)

6. Is the following passage plagiarized? Why or why not?

Original passage (from Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell):

And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedoms that he destroys. (p. 996)

Paraphrase:

Orwell describes his moment of insight when he realizes that it is not he who is in charge, but the expectant crowd behind him. “It was at this moment … that I first grasped the hollowness, the...