Today's blog comes from my colleague, the multitalented Jennifer Murtoff. I was shocked when she told me how much plagiarism she encounters, even in supposedly original text written by professional authors. An alternate title for this piece could be, "Plagiarism: It's Not Just for High School Students Anymore!" Enjoy. - Jen
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Plagiarism: No One Will Ever Know—Or Will They?
Back in middle school, we were cautioned against plagiarism—taking someone else’s words and passing them off as our own. It seems to be an easy out for those who don’t want to write a paper or a report for a book they never read.
However, plagiarism is a bad shortcut for several reasons: 1) the cheater is the one who ultimately loses—a person who plagiarizes doesn’t learn what he or she is supposed to learn; 2) it is academic misconduct; 3) it steals another person’s livelihood and intellectual property; 4) it is unethical, mentally lazy, and leads to bad habits later in life.
Writers are often required to sign legal contracts that declare their work will be original. Often the contracts stipulate that the writer will not be paid if the work is not original. However, the number of writers who plagiarize is still appalling.
How can you spot plagiarism?
A good editor can spot plagiarism a mile away. Here are a few things to look for:
1) Shifts in tone or authorial voice: Everyone has a voice, or particular style, when writing. It may vary from piece to piece, but the voice will remain consistent throughout a piece. Written pieces also have tone, which is the level of formality. Writing can have a conversational tone, an informative tone, or a didactic tone. When authorial voice or tone changes suddenly, this may indicate plagiarism.
For example, a book I worked on a few years ago had a very didactic tone. It made a sudden shift to a conversational tone. My curiosity was piqued, and I investigated it online. About 65% of the book was plagiarized.
2) Inconsistent editing (spelling and punctuation): People generally make consistent mistakes and use consistent sentence structure. This is one of the joys of editing: Figure out how your author writes, and you’ve got smooth sailing—his or her mistakes will be relatively predictable. However, when different mistakes are made from section to section or chapter to chapter, this might indicate that something is suspect.
I was working on a biology project, and the text was very poorly written, clearly non-native English, with lots of subject-related spelling mistakes. It suddenly changed to florid prose: one paragraph was a flawlessly written description of the function of lysosomes. The “author” had picked up sections from an online biology review site.
3) Odd shifts of logic or sequencing: A good writer’s thoughts flow naturally and logically. Exceptions are manuscripts that have been written by an inexperienced author or that have been heavily edited. A text raises suspicions if it has sections that seem to reference an earlier concept that cannot be found. This results when an “author” has cut and pasted from a document and has not carefully read the text he or she is “borrowing.”
A law enforcement text I was working referenced an event “in the previous chapter” and listed another event “as previously discussed.” Neither could be found. An online investigation proved that the text was picked from several sources with no citations.
4) Writing inconsistent with the bulk of a student’s work: Students improve slowly and develop writing skills over time. A student does not suddenly go from C-grade writing on tests to producing an A-grade research paper. Look for slow improvements; if you see rapid improvements, the student has probably purchased a paper online—and there are plenty of places to do so.
I found this to be the case when I was tutoring an immigrant student whose writing to that time had been as expected—non-native speaker errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation; and issues with logic and grasp of subject matter. Then he asked me to read his final paper. From the first sentence, I knew it was not his work. The prose was well crafted, containing sentence structures that only a skilled native speaker would attempt. I looked up a sentence or two online and found the original essay. When confronted about this seeming incongruity, he denied copying it and stated that it was all his work. I pointed out that this was academic misconduct and grounds for failing the class.
How can you prove it is plagiarism?
Now that you’ve seen a few ways to spot text that isn’t proprietary, what happens if you suspect plagiarism but aren’t sure if it is or not? How can you investigate further?
I’ve mentioned looking up text online; the internet is a powerful tool that can easily help you determine if something has been picked up from the Web. Here are two steps you can take to check suspect text.
1) Upload text to Google: Place a sentence or two of the suspect text in the search box, and you may get a few hits. If you use quotes, you can find text that has been picked up verbatim (i.e., with no changes). If you do not use quotes, you may find similar text that has a few changes to the wording.
2) Upload text to Turnitin.com: This is a great site to check for plagiarism! It will shoot back a color-coded report that correlates to online sites. You can upload a paper, a chapter, or a book to their site. Check out their sister sites, too: WriteCheck for Students, iThenticate, turnitin for Admissions, and plagiarism.org.
So there you have it; now go out there and do battle against academic misconduct!
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