Plagiarism and How We Deal with it in Everyday Life and Business

As we go though life, we continually absorb other people's ideas. We hear other people's ideas though talking with others, reading magazines, newspapers, books etc. We incorporate these ideas into our own writing. This is what Plagiarism is. It is very important that we give credit where credit is due.

To avoid plagiarism we must give credit where credit is due when we use other people's ideas, opinion or theories. We also must give credit when we use any facts, statistics, graphs, or drawings. When using someone's written words or repeating someone's actual words we must give credit.

It is important to give credit where credit is due to keep the integrity of your work. These are not your thoughts ideas or opinion. With the use of the Internet, plagiarism has become easier today than before. There are many new types of software available out there to detect plagiarism.

No matter what field/business you are in, it is important to avoid plagiarism to maintain the integrity of your business. It doesn't matter if you are in the medical field, journalism or selling plywood to hurricane victims, people will remember how you act, respond and apply knowledge to share with the world. The United States Government even has an Office of research Integrity known as ORI, to ensure that written work is free of plagiarism. They consider plagiarism as both the theft and misappropriation of intellectual property.

References:

Indiana University, Pamphlet on Plagiarism [Electronic Version] retrieved on August 29, 2006 from http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

Iparadigms, 2005, "Plagiarism Today", [Electronic Version] retrieved on August 29, 2006 from http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism.html

ORI, Office of Research Integrity, "ORI Policy on Plagiarism" [Electronic Version] retrieved on August 29, 2006 from http://ori.dhhs.gov/policies/plagiarism.shtml