Do you feel like this when trying to understand Plagiarism and Citations???
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Many people think of plagiarism as copying another's work, or borrowing someone else's original ideas. But terms like "copying" and "borrowing" can disguise the seriousness of the offense:

   According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means:

• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own

• to use (another's production) without crediting the source

• to commit literary theft

• to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

   In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.

***Update*** to include AI tools.

Plagiarism is the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without giving appropriate credit, regardless of how that work was obtained, and submitting it to fulfill academic requirements. 

Notice the parts of the policy that have been italicized for emphasis. These highlight a couple of important things:

• Doing academic work requires that the work you turn in is your own. A paper that is written by AI is not considered your own original work. 

• It doesn’t matter which AI program/software you use. Using any of these to write your papers is considered a form of plagiarism. 

It is important to note that tools that check your writing are okay to use. Examples can include the autocorrect feature in Google Docs and the app Grammarly. These tools, which scan pieces of writing for errors and/or make suggestions for edits, are very different from AI programs that write entire papers. The key difference is that it is your own original writing that is being scanned for possible mistakes versus AI that does all the writing for you.

According to U.S. law, the answer is yes. The expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property, and is protected by copyright laws, just like original inventions. Almost all forms of expression fall under copyright protection as long as they are recorded in some way (such as a book or a computer file).

   All of the following are considered plagiarism:

• turning in someone else's work as your own

• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit

• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks

• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation

• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit

• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

   Most cases of plagiarism can be avoided, however, by citing sources. Simply acknowledging that certain material has been borrowed, and providing    your audience with the information necessary to find that source, is usually enough to prevent plagiarism.

- Plagiarism.org: Learning Center: What is Plagiarism?

A "citation" is the way you tell your readers that certain material in your work came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again, including:

1. information about the author

2. the title of the work

3. the name and location of the company that published your copy of the source

4. the date your copy was published

5. the page numbers of the material you are borrowing

Giving credit to the original author by citing sources is the only way to use other people's work without plagiarizing. But there are a number of other reasons to cite sources:

1. citations are extremely helpful to anyone who wants to find out more about your ideas and where they came from.

2. not all sources are good or right -- your own ideas may often be more accurate or interesting than those of your sources. Proper citation will keep you from taking the rap for someone else's bad ideas.

3. citing sources shows the amount of research you've done.

4. citing sources strengthens your work by lending outside support to your ideas.

Not at all. On the contrary, citing sources actually helps your reader distinguish your ideas from those of your sources. This will actually emphasize the originality of your own work.

Whenever you borrow words or ideas, you need to acknowledge their source. The following situations almost always require citation:

1. whenever you use quotes

2. whenever you paraphrase

3. whenever you use an idea that someone else has already expressed

4. whenever you make specific reference to the work of another

5. whenever someone else's work has been critical in developing your own ideas. - Plagiarism.org: Learning Center What Is a Citation >

MLA no longer requires the use of URLs in MLA citations. Because Web addresses are not static (i.e., they change often) and because documents sometimes appear in multiple places on the Web (e.g., on multiple databases), MLA explains that most readers can find electronic sources via title or author searches in Internet Search Engines.

For instructors or editors who still wish to require the use of URLs, MLA suggests that the URL appear in angle brackets after the date of access. Break URLs only after slashes.

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. The Internet Classics Archive. Web Atomic and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 13 Sept. 2007. Web. 4 Nov. 2008. ‹http://classics.mit.edu/›.
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