Chapter 7

Chapter seven of the Bedford Researcher describes all aspects plagiarism, from what it is to how to avoid it. The beginning of the chapter focuses on differentiating between intentional plagiarism and unintentional plagiarism. The former, of course is the use of another person’s writing that you put under your own name and try to take credit for. The book describes that this can range from just copying passages to entire documents, or closely paraphrasing. Unintentional plagiarism they describe as inadequate quotations or lack of clear difference between your ideas and the sources. The chapter goes into more depth about both forms, as well as give advice on how best to avoid them.

I actually found this chapter to be more helpful than I had anticipated. Plagiarism, like citing sources, was something I heard about over and over again from teachers over the years, so preparing to read this chapter felt rather redundant. But, like with all the work we’ve been doing with how to correctly cite sources, I was yet again faced with the reality that as many times as I had heard people use the term plagiarism, I really had only the most basic understanding of what is was or how to avoid it. The various scenarios the book runs through make the subject much clearer in my mind, and I am greatly appreciative of having explanations on things such as what is considered to be common knowledge.