What is Plagiarism?
Le Moyne College defines plagiarism as “the attempt to fulfill an
academic requirement by using the ideas, words or work of another person
and representing them as one’s own. Academic conventions dictate that
students and scholars must acknowledge the source of the phrases and
ideas that are not their own. Many ideas and phrases are so familiar
that they have become the common property of all; these obviously
require no documentation. However, the use of ideas or phrases that are
clearly original with another author requires that the appropriate
credit be given to the original author.”
Le Moyne College mandates strict penalties for plagiarism because
“plagiarism undermines that basic relationship of trust that must exist
between teacher and student and among students for the educational
process to work. For this reason, penalties for plagiarism range from
failure on the assignment to expulsion from the College.”
The Department of History takes plagiarism very seriously because the
copying of another person's words, or the use of his/her ideas, without
acknowledgment is both legally and morally wrong. To copy verbatim a
sentence from a book, or to appropriate another scholar's ideas without
attribution (even though the wording has been changed – paraphrased) may
or may not be deliberate, but they are still examples of plagiarism and
must be avoided. To purchase a previously written term paper from a
corporation or a private individual, and then to claim it as your own,
is the worst sort of deliberate plagiarism. Therefore, you should
expect professors in the History Department to use TurnItIn.com. As
well, you should bear in mind that in history courses at Le Moyne
College the penalty for plagiarism is failure for the course, not just
for the plagiarized assignment, and notification of the Dean of Arts and
Sciences.
How to Avoid Plagiarism
Read carefully the page on Citations for guidelines on citing your sources properly.