Cheating

Plagiarism, which is the most common form of academic dishonesty or cheating, is essentially the act of taking the work of another and passing it off as your own. The work of others can include their thoughts and inventions, but by far the most common form of plagiarism is using the words and ideas of others without proper acknowledgement.

While every college’s or university’s regulations will reflect what has been said so far, we now move on to matters where there may be differences of terminology. However, the important thing to grasp is that whatever terminology your college or university adopts, they will still be talking about cheating. Some institutions simply give an extended meaning to the word plagiarism, to include what others would call something like academic dishonesty. Whatever it is called, we are now dealing with matters such as:

falsifying or inventing material (for example, inventing case names); A providing false information about a source you have quoted (for example, claiming to have used a later edition of a book than that which you actually used);

copying other people’s work or allowing them to copy yours (both of which are forms of what is sometimes known as collusion);

failing to put direct quotations in quotation marks (also known as inverted commas or speech marks); and

making only minor changes to the writings of others and then failing to acknowledge the source.

Three matters are worth particular emphasis.

First, the fact that using quotation marks and citing your sources will protect you from allegations of plagiarism must not be taken as an invitation to produce work which is simply a string of quotations, such as: Smith says [quotation]. But on the other hand, Brown says [quotation], while Jones says [quotation]; and so on. Dictionaries of quotations are one thing; essays are another.

Secondly, you may feel that you cannot improve on the way the leading judges and commentators have expressed complex ideas, and that you would be foolish to try to do so. The answer to this is twofold.

It is implicit in what we have already said that there will undoubtedly be situations in which it is acceptable – and indeed, desirable – that you should use someone else’s actual words. (Of course, when you do so – and we make no apology for repeating the most basic point of all – you must use quotation marks and cite your source. But, provided you do this, you may be demonstrating that you have the ability to identify the very core of the point which is being made, and that you possess the discernment to be able to identify a telling turn of phrase.)

In situations where direct quotation is not appropriate, you may experience difficulty in putting things into your own words. More particularly, you may find it difficult to get far enough away from the original form of words to avoid plagiarism, while still saying substantially the same thing. While conceding that this can be difficult, we must also point out that it is at least part of the essence of the exercise, because expressing things accurately in your own words is one way in which you demonstrate that you really understand them. Moving to a more practical response, one very useful technique for dealing with this problem is to take notes from (but do not simply copy out) the original text.

Thirdly, you need to take particular care if you set your written work out in such a way that lengthy quotations are indented as blocks of text (as they are in this book, as well as in many others). You might assume that the fact of indentation is sufficient to indicate that you are quoting someone else; and, for everyday purposes, this assumption may well be sound. Nevertheless, if you rely solely on the fact of indentation, without the addition of quotation marks (which, once again, is the style adopted in this book as well as in many others), you run the risk that a particularly strict marker may decide that you are guilty of plagiarism. While you may succeed on appeal (assuming – which will not always be the case – that the members of the appeal committee are less strict than your original marker), you will find the mere fact of being subjected to the allegation is stressful. Additionally, the time-scales for processing appeals can extend to many months in some colleges and universities. Apart from prolonging the exposure to stress, such delays can have serious consequences in terms of progression to the next stage of your studies and even, at final year level, in terms of graduation. Fortunately, the solution is simple. Whatever the prevailing fashion in the typographical design of books may be, all you have to do, in order to put your academic integrity beyond doubt, is to add quotation marks at the beginning and end of your indented quotations.

Fourthly, a particular difficulty arises in the context of discussing assessed coursework with other people. More particularly, there is always the danger that, once you enter such discussions, you will cross the line which divides the offence of collusion from the kind of legitimate discussion which is a healthy part of belonging to any academic community.

Ultimately, in many cases the distinction between collusion and discussion is a matter of degree, but in practical terms a disciplinary panel must draw a line and decide on which side of that line your conduct falls. A useful test is to ask yourself whether the discussion provides you (or others) with ideas that you (or they) would not otherwise have had. Giving yourself a scrupulously honest answer to this question should enable you to avoid straying into the forbidden territory of collusion.

The most important piece of advice is simply this: make sure you

know,

understand, and

follow

your college’s or university’s regulations in relation to all forms of cheating, whatever terminology they may use.

Having emphasised the importance of acknowledging your sources, we must now turn to the nuts and bolts of how you do this, and discuss the techniques of referencing and footnoting.