Categories of Plagiarism Plagiarism takes a lot of different forms. Here are a few of the most common faces of plagiarism:
Borrowing: Whether it's a paper you got from a friend or one you found online, submitting someone else's work as your own is plagiarism.
Citing inaccurately: Citing sources inaccurately or citing sources that don't exist is plagiarism.
Cobbling: Piecing together an entire paper of quotes and paraphrases from others' work—even if you've cited them—fails to demonstrate your understanding of the material. That's plagiarism.
Paraphrasing excessively or without citation: When you put ideas you learned from a source into your own words, that's called paraphrasing. In that case, you don't need to use quotation marks, but you still need to cite the source of the ideas. This webpage offers guidance on paraphrasing: Successful vs. unsuccessful paraphrases.
Quoting without punctuating or citing: If you use another person's exact words in your paper, you must use quotation marks and cite the source of the quote. If you don't do both, that's plagiarism.
Recycling: In each class, your teacher expects you to build new knowledge through fresh effort. Recycling your previous work—turning in one of your old papers, presentations, or projects—is self-plagiarism. And self-plagiarism is plagiarism.