We are sure that sometimes you wonder if you can use the information found in various books in your own work and how to do it correctly. Today we will try to explain this to you, telling you about plagiarism and how to avoid it.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying someone else's work (or parts of it) and presenting it as yours. This can apply to books and articles, but also to pictures, songs or movies. Plagiarism can be treated as theft, so it’s important to avoid it. It is also considered to be unethical.

Source: https://shareeducatonideas.com/plagiarism-and-academic-honesty/

Let's try to explain it with an example. Imagine you need to do homework on a poem that was discussed in school. In the task, you have to write your own thoughts. However, for various reasons, you do not do it yourself, but just rewrite the interpretation of a poem from a blog found on the internet. You do not mark anywhere that you used the blog and give the assignment back saying you did it yourself. This is how you act dishonestly and commit plagiarism.

Now imagine a different situation. This time you also have to write your thoughts on the poem. You do most of the task yourself, but you also want to add a few sentences from a web blog to it, because you think the author said something interesting. So you add them to the homework, use quotation marks and give the website address of the blog, saying that you found it there. This is how you do everything right and don't plagiarize.

The difference between these situations is giving the source of the text you are using. It is a good habit that will allow you to be honest with others and yourself. Giving the source is also the easiest way to avoid plagiarism. Try to keep this in mind when you use various texts or other materials in your work. 

If you want to learn more about plagiarism and how to avoid it, follow our page. There will be another text related to this topic soon.