There is no doubt, that plagiarism is one of the worst literary crimes one can commit. Since elementary school, we have been taught to never copy someone else’s work. That was the only definition I knew for plagiarism for a long time. I always associated the word “plagiarize” with the act of copying. However, when reading chapter seven in the BBG, I found more detailed definitions for the term “plagiarism”. There are many ways to plagiarize someone else’s work, even if you are doing it by accident. For example, in the section “Comparing Passages from a Source”, I noticed that you can plagiarize a work simply by misinterpreting the point your source was trying to make, and putting that into your work. If a writer paraphrases someone else’s work, and even gives all the correct credit, but presents an idea that is different from the original source, that is considered plagiarizing as well. By misinterpreting the context, the source no longer bears any significance, and contributes nothing to the writer’s argument or point. Before reading this chapter, I didn’t know that there were so many more ways to plagiarize someone’s work besides simply “copying and pasting”. Plagiarism is taken very seriously in this school, and in the literary world in general, so I must make sure to double and triple check my sources and my citations, before publishing any of my work.
