In love with the fake, the recycled and the copycats

Recently, the topic of plagiarism was brought to my attention and this topic took me back to my university days. We had to cite every reference and ensure that no 7 identical words consecutively can be found anywhere else, as it will be flagged as plagiarism. Yes! there were instances we literally counted each word to ensure that consecutively, it does not appear in any other materials. 😅

Those were the days. Hence, I've decided to try writing a little about the topic that brought back much silly memories.😜

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is defined as "the process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own. " ^{Source: Cambridge Dictionary}

According to CopyLeaks.com, there are "4 types of plagiarism", as listed in the table below:-

TYPES OF PLAGIARISM	DESCRIPTION
Direct Plagiarism	"Most commonly, the crime of plagiarism involves adopting parts from the writing of another writer without proper mention of the source. Often the person copying from the text does not change even a single word. The plagiarist can also change parts of sentences or replace some of the words with his/her own. However, it also comes under the crime of plagiarism. Among the different forms of plagiarism, direct plagiarism is the most harmful one." Had I not made reference and quoted the source: CopyLeaks.com, it would have been direct plagiarism as my lazy arse just copied and pasted the content from CopyLeaks.com. ZERO Originality 😴
Mosaic Plagiarism	"There is another type of plagiarism which is unintentional. In this case, the plagiarist may have mentioned the source of the content he has referred to. But, if he/she does not acknowledge the quoted part or put them under the quotation marks correctly, then the writer commits the crime of plagiarism."
Self-Plagiarism	"Self-plagiarism is one of the common types of plagiarism, where high school students copy and paste part of their previously submitted academic paper. If the student submits the same paper for two different class projects without asking the concerned teacher, then that is considered as self-plagiarism." This would be similar to posting the same or similar content at 2 or more communities...I guess 😜.
Accidental Plagiarism	"When the plagiarist misquotes the phrases or parts of the text he/she has taken from the source material or does not cite the source even or adequately or cites a wrong source." This sounds tricky to me. Truly have to be extra careful or best is to be ourselves and original in our content to avoid interfacing with such matters. 😜

^{Source: Copyleaks}

How do we detect plagiarism?

^{Image Source: Carthrottle}

We read and read and read from as many sources as possible on the same or related topic. Thereafter, we try our level best to recall if these words, ideas and / or sentences were ever mentioned in our previous readings or exchanges, to the best of our knowledge 💪🏽😎

Hence, if you are absolutely lucky and your professor has yet to come across or read an article which you copied from, no plagiarism is detected 😉 but more often than not, you get caught 😅 due to the amount of effort, hours and experience, they have on the subject matter.

Jokes aside, this was how it might have been done in my younger years but now, the web offers numerous sites that help detect plagiarism. For example, Small SEO Tool

1. Key your text or upload a document, verify that you are not a bot and click on the check for plagiarism button.
   

2. Voila!! The results will appear - 100% plagiarism.
   

How to avoid plagiarism?

Avoid being a copycat 😽

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