Spotlights on Copying: Warning about Plagiarism

Perusing book reviews and other blog posts this past week, other writing instuctors and I have identified at least eight instances of writing copied from other sources. That is more than one case per day on average.

This is entirely unacceptable, as I have spelled out in Guidelines for book reviews, section 2.3, in particular: By all means avoid copying! Mr. T. is more emphatic in his post about book reviews. He virtually shouts: "No quoting!!" and "Don't copy!!!" (Tomeiter's Garden, Book review examples, items one and three; April 17, 2007).

Copying someone else's work without marking quotations and citing references may seem like an easy way out of, or around, a writing assignment. In fact, it is plagiarism (WinK Wiki, FAQ), an easy way out of a course with an invitation to come back and take the course again next year.

In a nutshell, here is what may happen if you do copy someone else's writing and try to pass it off as your own in Writing III or IV. You will get one warning. This is a warning to everyone in the Writing Studio!

If you keep copied passages in a previous post on your blog for this semester after this warning, or copy in a future post, you will fail the course. To get credit for the course, you will have to come back next year. So keep your writing your own!

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