Plagiarism is an important issue at American schools. When you use someone else's ideas without naming them as the source of the information, you are plagiarizing. In the United States, plagiarism is considered intellectual theft. This is also against copyright law.
The
UNC Honor Code defines plagiarism as the "deliberate
or reckless representation of another's words, thoughts, or
ideas as one's own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, whether graded
or otherwise" (
Instrument of Student Judicial Governance, Section II.B.1.). This is a serious offense in the academic world. Here are some examples of plagiarism:
- Buying or using a paper or project from another person or service and saying it is yours
- Giving your instructor someone else's work, but saying it is yours
- Copying statements from a source and using them without proper use of quotation marks and citations
- Paraphrasing information from a source without proper citations